South Carolina flooding turns Clayton woman's 5-hour journey home into 2-day ordeal
CLAYTON, NC (WTVD) -- A Clayton woman found herself lost in all the road closures caused the flooding in South Carolina over the weekend. What would normally be a five-hour trip to get home turned into an almost two-day odyssey.
Lynn Zueck spent the weekend on Tybee Island - just east of Savannah Georgia. She's a nurse and planned a weekend getaway with fellow nurses she has met throughout her career. It was supposed to be a fun, stress free weekend and it was, until she started to make her way back home.
"Yesterday morning, I left about 9:30," said Zueck.
She left to get home earlier than planned to beat traffic, not knowing that there was no beating traffic. She soon found herself stuck.
"I got into a big traffic jam on 95 near Alcoa, South Carolina," said Zueck, "45 minutes to an hour just sitting on the road."
The days and days of rain caused flooding that shut down a 70-mile stretch of I-95. When she finally got off the interstate she didn't know where to go and saw a car ahead of her with a North Carolina tag.
"So I thought I'll just follow them," said Zueck.
But she would soon find out that several main roads to get home were flooded and closed, so she went backwards.
"I went all the way back to Savannah, and I got on I-16 and went over to Macon," said Zueck who decided to go ahead and get a room after spending nine hours on the road.
She got up early Monday and spent another almost 10 hours getting to her home in Clayton.
"So a five-hour trip took me, I don't know, I was in the car from 9:30 to 5:30 last night and then I left at 5:30 this morning and what time did I get home? About three o'clock today, for a five-hour trip," she said.
As of Monday afternoon, the South Carolina Department of Transportation is reporting that 70-mile stretch on I-95 from I-26 to I-20 is still closed.
