Gov. Jim Doyle said Friday that authorities did not
initially grasp the scope of a traffic backup that left thousands of motorists
stranded for as long as 12 hours in a snowstorm.

The governor said law enforcement may have treated it as a
routine traffic delay for too long rather than a situation that required an
emergency response.

“We’ve got to look very, very hard at whether they made
that transition in a timely way and did the things that were needed to protect
people,” he said. “I just don’t think there was a recognition of how
serious it was out there.”

Doyle said he also wants to know why he wasn’t informed
sooner and whether the delay means he could have activated the Wisconsin
National Guard earlier to help deliver food and water to motorists.

Doyle stopped short of apologizing to those stranded, saying
he would wait for the results of a review he ordered.

“I think everybody feels very bad about what happened
out there, but the key here to me is to find out what happened,” he said.

The backup on a stretch of westbound Interstate 39-90
started early Wednesday afternoon when semitrailer trucks were unable to get up
a hill because of the storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on southern
Wisconsin.

The trucks blocked the freeway lanes, and traffic backed up
as far as 19 miles from near Madison back toward Janesville. At one point, the
State Patrol counted more than 2,000 trucks and cars stopped and stranded.

Some motorists complained they were stuck for 10 hours and
saw no one from law enforcement and received no aid. Others said they had
received no warning to avoid that stretch of highway even hours after the
standstill started. Once they were stuck, they said they received little
official information, even when they called 911.

After media reports describing the problems Thursday, Doyle
announced he was ordering a review of the response. He called a news conference
Friday to elaborate on the questions he wants Adjutant General Donald Dunbar,
who heads the Wisconsin National Guard, to answer in his report due next week.

Doyle said he wants to know how the 911 calls were handled
and who was responsible for assessing the information.

“I’m very concerned about whether the information was
flowing here in a way that people got the picture of what was going on,”
Doyle said. “Who was it deciding that this really wasn’t that serious of
an event? Who made the decisions not to pass it up the line?”

Doyle said he did not learn of the backup until after 7 p.m.
Wednesday, several hours after the first drivers became stuck. He was informed
by Natural Resources Secretary Matt Frank and not the State Patrol, which has
said it learned about the situation around 4 p.m. Radio stations were reporting
the standstill even earlier.

Doyle said he contacted State Patrol Superintendent David
Collins after speaking with Frank.

Collins described the backup, “But he also told me they
were making contact with everybody along the line, they were knocking on the
windows making an offer for food, water,” Doyle said.

Soon after, Doyle said his staff was in touch with the
National Guard, which started mobilizing members to help with the response. He
said he gave the order for them to officially move in at 9:15 p.m.

“One of the things I really am interested in, what was
the situation at 5 o’clock?” Doyle said. “Was it something that our
office should have been notified of and we should have been talking about
calling out the National Guard at that time?”

Doyle said he also wants to know whether it would have been
feasible to close the interstate or take other steps to stop drivers from
entering the back of the line.

“There may well have been ways that we could have
avoided a lot of those people getting into that situation,” he said.