This isn't really an issue of moderation, this keeps happening even on sites where there's at least two mods active at any given time. Questions can stay on that list longer than most people can stay awake - there will always be times where these hit during a gap. I don't think it can be avoided.
I'm not going to go so far as to call this a problem. However, it's something that we should probably address. There's quite a few users on every single site that we have who don't appreciate the party bus driving slowly through their neighborhood with the music up full blast, and they definitely don't appreciate picking up all of the bottles and beer cans after it leaves.
Get on the hot questions list, tweeted and then mentioned on Reddit and things get quite interesting for non-technical sites. On sites where the average person can comprehend every post for the most part - participation does tend to explode.
My proposed solution, which is still very much on the drawing board, allows for moderators or community managers to evict a question from the list provided that:
- There is definitely evidence of mayhem (as seen by vote/visit, comment/visit, question being protected while featured, and other things)
- The question has been featured for at least [n] hours (this wasn't just Jeff making fun of a PHP question on Twitter again to get it on the list, and it will soon die down in a sea of 'meh')
- Other criteria I haven't yet thought of (this is very much just an idea at this point, and the bullets above are also not carved in stone)
The problem is, this is a bit of a technical nightmare. That list is heavily cached because the query that goes into it is very expensive (or at least it was the last time that I heard Jarrod talking about it). Moderators would have to literally be able to evict it right from cache, which presents an interesting problem of a hot questions list that shrinks soon after being compiled.
You're right in expecting help to show up when it's needed - which is part of the reason why the community managers have moderator (and beyond) access on every site. We're also moderators on any site whenever the site needs extra hands. During the week, heck, even half of the weekend we have pretty much 24 hour coverage thanks to time zones.
Doing what you did is precisely what you should have done, and pretty much all you could have done. If your site is having problems and none of your mods happen to be around / awake at the time - any Stack Exchange employee can help you either by jumping in, or locating someone that can. Do not hesitate to reach out to anyone that works here if your site is in trouble and you need help.
Ideal, no - but it can work until something more tenable is put in place.