HOUSTON, Texas – A quick trip to the airport turned into a six hour bonding session between a father and daughter while sitting in standstill traffic.
Brent Hess thought he was doing the smart thing by leaving early Monday morning to drop his daughter, Courtney, off at the airport Monday morning.
They hopped on the Hardy Tollway around 10 a.m. to take Courtney to George Bush Intercontinental Airport for her 12:30 p.m. flight back to Denver.
They ended up spending the next six hours sitting in traffic, only getting off the highway around 4 p.m.
“I did lots of bonding time with my with my adult daughter,” Brent Hess said.
The cause: icy overpasses and bridges.
I had no idea. I mean, as soon as we got off from the Grand Parkway, it was literally five minutes, and we were dead stopped,” Brent said. “We would sit for five, ten minutes, then when we would move up, literally a couple of feet.”
Brent says his wife called the Harris County Toll Road Authority to find out what’s going on. That’s when they got the news that they might be spending the night.
“She called me back and said, you know, they told me that they don’t know if they’re going to have the road open if you’re going to spend the night,” he said. “What? You know, they’re probably 2,000 cars 3,000? I don’t know how many thousands. It was. It was a parking lot all the way to FM 1960. And that was from Louetta.”
It took road crews at least two different treatments to make the highway passable, but even then ice is still present.
Update: Maintenance crews have finished treating the northbound lanes of the Hardy Toll Road and they are passable to Northgate Crossing; however, icy conditions remain on the southbound lanes and crews are currently treating those lanes. pic.twitter.com/pTFht7QRNp
— Harris County Toll Road Authority (@HCTRA) January 15, 2024
“I used to work up I-70 in Colorado in the mountain area, and I still could get home. It was not this bad,” Courtney Hess said. “They just didn’t prepare. They don’t know. Houston, just, they have to learn to kind of de-ice the roads ahead of time.”
Needless to say, Courtney missed her flight.
She’s sticking around in the Houston area until this winter storm blows over, not taking any chances of getting stuck in the car with her dad again.
Um, I’m going to wait until Wednesday,” she said. “I decided to not even try tomorrow because I don’t think it’s worth trying.”