PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – New England winters are cold and snowy, and residents here boast about weathering the big blizzards.

So Rhode Island’s government was caught shamefaced Friday, trying to explain how about a foot of snow caused such confusion and aggravation. The storm trapped students at school or in buses for up to six hours. Police say about 300 vehicles got stuck or collided, and many were abandoned along treacherous highways. Traffic backed up past the Massachusetts border.

Providence Mayor David Cicilline quickly ordered an investigation to find out why dozens of buses were stranded on city streets, mostly because of gridlock, he said. School officials say the first wave of children were dismissed around noon. By 8 p.m., 60 of the district’s 152 buses were still on the road. Some children did not get home for another three hours, when police came to fetch them.

“Obviously, the people who are responsible are going to be held responsible,” Cicilline said. “If I were a parent, I’d be outraged.”

The snow fell heaviest in northwest Rhode Island, but the worst trouble happened in and around Providence, the capital and business center of this tiny state.

Savun Yon, a teacher’s assistant at Bailey Elementary School in Providence, said she was with a group of about 15 students who were stuck on the road for about three to four hours. A student relieved himself on the bus. Students snacked on juice, chips and cookies supplied by a nearby Coca-Cola plant, she said.

“There’s cars, there’s accidents, there’s police everywhere,” Yon said.

Some students were picked up by parents, but most were driven home by police officers around 10:30 p.m.

“At first, they were very patient,” she said of the children. “They were trying to be understanding of the whole situation.”

But after waiting on the bus for several hours, she said, “kids were getting so frustrated and tired. They complained they were hungry.”

Debbie Ruggieri, principal of Harry Kizirian School, a K-6 school in Providence, said between 20 and 30 students were stuck at the school for several hours because the bus that was supposed to pick them up broke down and another one never arrived.

The students passed the time by dancing, doing math games, watching a movie and snacking on cereal, she said.

“They were fine, they were content,” Ruggieri said. “I’m sure they felt safe. They were very familiar with everyone who was here.”

At a hastily called news conference, Department of Transportation Director Jerome Williams blamed a combination of factors for causing the commuting problems. As the storm approached, businesses and schools in the Providence area closed, triggering an early afternoon exodus just as the storm intensified, he said. Up to three inches of snow fell within an hour.

“If that happened today in sunshine, we’d have gridlock,” he said.

Williams said his agency sent more than 300 plows to clear the roads, but they could not keep up with the heavy snowfall or operate effectively on congested roads. Then a tractor trailer broke down on Interstate 95 in Providence, he said, hogging two lanes of traffic and taking hours to clear.

Unable to quickly get on the highways, traffic backed up into downtown Providence, contributing to the gridlock that Cicilline said caught the city’s school buses.

“We completely agree that yesterday was an unprecedented traffic disaster,” said Brian Stern, the chief of staff for Gov. Don Carcieri. He promised the state will conduct a review to figure out what went wrong.

Thursday’s snowstorm came at an awkward time for Carcieri, who went visiting troops in Iraq earlier this week and was traveling in the Middle East when the storm started, his staff said. Carcieri did keep in touch via telephone about preparations for the storm, Stern said.

Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts, a Democrat, faulted Carcieri, a Republican, for not declaring an emergency or fully staffing the state’s Emergency Operations Center. She said the command center would have permitted better communication between government agencies and motorists out on the highway.

She questioned why Carcieri’s administration used the command center to monitor a sailing festival in Newport but not a major snowstorm.

“This is New England. We have snow,” Roberts said. “We should be able to respond to a situation like this more effectively.”