HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania state senators warned Tuesday that a Valentine’s Day pileup on the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a lesson in chaos and gridlock that needs to be corrected before another one happens with more serious consequences.

The hearing before the Senate Transportation Committee focused on the weather analysis before water froze on the road during the Feb. 14 morning’s commute, the communication gaps between the responding agencies and the lack of access that police and emergency responders had to the road.

Transportation Committee Chairman John Rafferty, R-Montgomery, said that when agencies did respond, it was confused and chaotic.

“There seemed to be nobody ... who said, ‘I’m the guy,”’ Rafferty said. In the future, lines of authority and communication need to be clear in a large response to a major accident, he said.

Officials from the Pennsylvania State Police and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission acknowledged that they need to work on their response.

“There’s no question that there was some chaos,” said Mark Compton, the turnpike commission’s chief executive officer.

Nobody died as a result of the 41-vehicle chain-reaction crash over three miles on the Turnpike in suburban Philadelphia, about seven miles east of the Willow Grove interchange in Bucks County. The eastbound crashes were reported just before 8:30 a.m., in the middle of rush hour and about five hours after a storm that dropped a foot of snow in the area.

It took about eight hours to clear the road, and state police troopers responding to the accident had to leave their cars in gridlocked traffic and get to the scene on foot, police said.