JANESVILLE — After a Feb. 5-6 snowstorm left about 2,000 motorists stranded for hours along Interstate 39/90 in Dane and Rock counties, officials scrambled to find ways to prevent a similar situation in the future.

A Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs report issued in February concluded the situation could have been avoided — or at least minimized — with a better traffic-monitoring system. Officials were forced to rely on reports from police and motorists, which didn’t provide an accurate assessment of the problem.

“Spot reports … ranged from ‘a few vehicles’ to ‘2,000,’ depending on what could be seen or estimated from a particular vantage point,” the report states.

Bill Mieborg of Roscoe was headed south on I-90 during that storm, and while he was not completely stopped, like northbound motorists, he said it took him seven hours to get from Portage to Rockton.

“I used to truck to California and back, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Mieborg, who owns Mieborg Brothers, a trucking company in Roscoe. “All the ramps had cars that were stalled or stuck. You couldn’t get off.”

Mieborg said that while he couldn’t get off the interstate, he was grateful to be moving at all, even at speeds of 10 mph.

“The poor guys on the other side, I felt pretty bad for them,” he said. “I’m not exaggerating; they had 2- and 3-foot drifts in front of their cars. It was really too bad they weren’t stopping people from going down there.”

Local authorities say additional resources are needed to cope with similar emergencies in the future. And in fact, traffic-monitoring equipment purchased for that stretch of highway is in hand, but not installed.

“Any tools or resources that we as law enforcement could have to monitor that traffic situation would have been helpful,” said Chief Deputy Barbara Tillman of the Rock County Sheriff’s Department.

The Rock County stretch of I-39/90 has a partial traffic-monitoring system. In 2004, the state Department of Transportation installed 45-foot-tall poles on overpasses and purchased video cameras to mount atop the poles to monitor traffic from a central location.

However, the department lacked funds for upkeep and installation. For four years, the technology has not been a high priority, and the cameras remain in a Madison warehouse.

In 2005, the county’s Local Emergency Planning Committee sent letters to state officials in an attempt to get the cameras installed.

“(The state) said that they did not have the funds at that time, and we kind of hit a dead end with it,” said Rock County Emergency Planning Coordinator Shirley Connors.

Given last month’s backup, Connors hopes the need for cameras becomes a higher priority.

Gary Schenck, chairman of the county’s Local Emergency Planning Committee, agreed.

“It seems to me that if you had a feed into the State Patrol headquarters, as well as the local dispatches, they couldn’t help but have an easier time monitoring how the backup was progressing,” he said. “Anytime you have information that’s instantaneous, and can avoid having someone drive out there (to view conditions) … I just think it could have made a difference.”

Dave Vieth, director of the DOT’s Highway Operations Bureau, said there is no timetable for installing the cameras.

“We have been looking to find a way to get them connected for some time,” he said, noting that state officials continue to negotiate for access to a fiber-optic cable needed to install the cameras.

“(Installation) is a reasonable possibility sometime over the course of the next year,” he added.

Funds also are needed for maintenance and for staff to review the video.

“Getting the images is one thing, but being staffed and prepared to use that information is another thing,” Vieth said.

Though they have been in storage for years, Vieth said the cameras “absolutely” still are compatible with today’s technology.

Tillman said funding issues are understandable, but the need for cameras remains.

“In light of the recent situation, the volume of traffic on the interstate and … backups not being that unusual, we believe that it would be a good use of funding to take the cameras that have already been purchased and get them installed,” she said.

Rock County legislators also are concerned about installation delays. State Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said she only recently learned the cameras had been purchased but still are in storage.

Robson also discovered that the funds needed to maintain the cameras would come from the same DOT maintenance budget that covers snow removal and salting.

“That budget is pretty depleted,” she said. “I’m looking at finding another budget to be able to use for installing these cameras. There’s a lot of traffic in that area, and there has just been one snafu after another.”

In addition to the February backup, dense fog in early January caused more than a dozen accidents on the interstate near Madison.

A similar monitoring system is used in the Madison and Milwaukee areas. The real-time look at what’s happening on the interstate can make a difference, advocates say.

“(The cameras) are very advantageous to us in gaining situational awareness of an event,” said Capt. Keith Teasdale, of the Wisconsin State Patrol’s Southwest Region office. “It allows us to look at the extent of an incident and the impact an incident’s having as it develops.”

When a tractor-trailer rolled over last week on I-39/90 near U.S. Highway 151 in Dane County, police used the cameras to decide where to place officers and how to reroute traffic.

“It’s key to us being able to develop situational awareness,” Teasdale said.

Robson said she is working with other county legislators to get the issue resolved.

“We’ll be working in concert … to get more information from the DOT and to get these installed,” she said. “If it takes legislation, it takes legislation. We’ll do whatever we need to do.”

— Staff Writer Lynn Vollbrecht contributed to this report.