Black ice remains a threat

A day after three people died in a series of pileups on icy interstates in the Philadelphia area, officials warned motorists to drive carefully because of a new threat of black ice.

Crews were out all night treating major thoroughfares, but the combination of near freezing temperatures and wet surfaces meant icy patches could still form, especially on untreated secondary roads and side streets.

A number of accidents were reported overnight around the region and speed limits on the Benjamin Franklin, Betsy Ross and Walt Whitman bridges were reduced to 35 mph.

Several SEPTA bus routes were shortened due to icy conditions but resumed normal operations around 8 a.m. The transit agency also warned that Regional Rail station platforms and parking lots could be icy, and urged riders to use caution.

On the plus side, schools were closed and fewer vehicles were on the roadways thanks to the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

The black ice threat will ease as the sun gets higher in the sky and temperatures rise during the day to around 40.

The rain that fell Sunday not only made roadway surfaces icy, it set a record for the date.

The National Weather Service said it measured 1.84 inches of Philadelphia International Airport on Sunday, breaking the previous record for a Jan. 18 of 1.06 inches, set in 1930.

On Sunday, one wreck on the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) in Gladwyne, Montgomery County, involved 60 cars and trucks. Another, on I-476 in Marple Township, Delaware County, smashed up a dozen vehicles after a tractor-trailer jackknifed.

State police identified two drivers killed in the Blue Route pileup as Thomas Michael Brennan of Lansdale and Jason Edward Anderson of Dover, Del. A third driver was hospitalized with head trauma.

In the pileup on the Schuylkill Expressway, Eric Alan Blau, 31, of Philadelphia, was killed and about 30 others injured 30. Police said Blau, 31, was fatally injured when got out of his disabled Mazda Protege and was struck by another car.

Even fire crews responding to crashes were not immune. In Bellmawr, Camden County, a fire truck responding to a one-vehicle crash on Route 42 was damaged when it was hit by a car in what would become a a dozen-vehicle wreck that left two people injured.

Hospitals across the region were busy treating people injured in wrecks - and pedestrians who broke bones when they fell on icy sidewalks.

The so-called flash freeze also shut the four major Delaware River bridges for a time, threw trains and airplanes off schedule, and made travel generally miserable.

Emergency dispatchers received hundreds of calls for ice-related crashes - including 100 in Bucks County and more than 75 in Montgomery County.