And you thought you had bad traffic! Tropical storm strands thousands in Nevada

In what may be the area's worst storm in decades, a 2-mile-long stretch of highway in Moapa Nevada was destroyed by four inches of rain that occurred in just an hour, part of the end of Tropical Storm Norbert.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The rain caused delays of eight hours or more, stranding thousands of vacationers, sightseers and long-distance truckers or forcing them to take a variety of ill maintained rural roads.

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This roundabout path has resulted in millions of dollars in losses for regional trucking companies and customers. Many drivers who are already on tight schedules, and with legal limits on how long they can drive, have given up.

"The worst backup I've seen in 25 years as a long-distance trucker," said Ken Leth, a driver for Las Vegas-based Truline Corp. trucking company who says he has clocked three million road miles. "You couldn't get up and running. It was 20 miles an hour most of the way."

This delay, of up to 36 hours for deliveries, means that hospitals have run out of clean linens for patients and rural gas stations have run out of fuel.

"It's been tough," said Paul Enos, chief executive of the Nevada Trucking Assn., which represents 530 companies. "Some people are getting desperate."

"We've been trying to get hours-of-service exemption so guys can wait out the delays and stay on the road," he said. "There are just so many towns out there that depend on trucks."

In Nevada, 94% of all manufactured goods are delivered by truck, apposed to just 69% nationally, he said. Much of that cargo travels along I-15, a critical commercial artery that handles 25,500 vehicles per day.

Since the storm hit, the I-15 has been closed from both directions, and state transportation crews have been working around the clock to repair the damage. State officials intend to open one lane for both directions by September 19, but traffic will still be restricted to cars and light trucks.

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