[Random] What was the problem on I-10 last night?

Around 10pm I was driving home from the gym, heading west-bound on I-10. Just as I passed 610 and before I came upon the Marq*E Entertainment Center, traffic came to a complete stand still. I mean a dead halt.

Soon enough some guy started driving in reverse on the shoulder so he could get back to the nearest exit, which was only a couple hundred feet back. Now, trust me when I say that I'm normally not the type to partake in stuff like that, but after my 51-hour evacuation during Rita, I start to get uneasy when I have to sit in traffic too long. So, I (and many others) decided to follow suit and drive in reverse back to the exit. After about 5 minutes of waiting in line for the exit, I was off and running.

I checked both Google Maps and AT&T Navigator on my phone, but neither showed any kind of traffic alert. I didn't catch anything on the radio either, and by the time I got home I totally forgot to check online.

So, does anybody know what the heck was going on? I imagine it had to be a pedestrian accident, or at least some kind of 18 wheeler spill/fire. This was no ordinary traffic, especially at 10pm.

 

So seriously, nobody else saw this or heard about it?

 

Hmm...

I guess that could be it, but it looked like it was something much more severe.

 

Like I said before, this seemed like something else. I drive that stretch every single night and I've never seen it at a complete stop like that. As bigbadjon_e said, this was to the point that people were getting out of their cars and walking around. If it were just construction, I think they would have made traffic exit the freeway at Washington like they seem to do all the time.

Strange.

 

Got it. Looks like I got there shortly after they closed down the freeway, which explains why everyone was still on it.