Deadly 95-car pile-up
Deadly 95-car pile-up
Almost one hundred vehicles crashed Sunday along a mountainous, foggy open up of interstate near the Virginia-North Carolina border in the United States, killing three people and injuring twenty five others.
Police said traffic along Interstate seventy seven in southwest Virginia backed up for about thirteen kilometres in the southbound lanes after the accidents. Authorities closed the northbound lanes so that fire trucks, ambulances and police could get to the series of chain-reaction wrecks.
Virginia State Police determined there were seventeen separate crashes involving ninety five vehicles within a km span near the base of Fancy Gap Mountain, spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. The crashes began around 1:15 p.m. Sunday when there was powerful fog in the area.
“This mountain is legendary for fog banks. They have advance signs warning people. But the problem is, people are eyeing well and all of a sudden they’re in a fog bank,” said Glen Sage of the American Crimson Cross office in the town of Galax.
Since 1997, there have been at least six such pileups on the mountain but Sunday’s crash was the most deadly, according to The Roanoke Times. Two people died in crashes involving dozens of vehicles in both two thousand and 2010.
This photo provided by the Virginia State Police shows the scene following a 75-vehicle pileup on Interstate seventy seven near the Virginia-North Carolina border.
Overhead message boards warned drivers since about six a.m. Sunday to slow down because of the severe fog, Geller said. The crashes were mostly caused by drivers going too rapid for conditions.
At the “epicenter” was a wreck involving up to eight vehicles, some of which caught fire, Geller said. Photos from the accident scene showcased a burned out tractor-trailer and several crumpled vehicles badly charred. Those taken to hospitals had injuries ranging from serious to minor.
School buses took stranded people to shelters and hotels.
Nina Rose, 20, and her mother, were driving home to Rochester, N.Y., when they encountered the pileup.
“With so much fog we didn’t see much around it,” Rose told the Roanoke newspaper. “As we got further up we just witnessed a bunch of people standing on the median, just with their kids and families all together. There were cars smashed into other cars, and cars just underneath other semi-trucks.”
Darrell Utt, 17, of Moore County, N.C., was stuck in the northbound lanes for about three hours as he traveled to Huntington, W. Va.
“It was truly foggy at very first,” he said. “We most likely eyed over fifty tow trucks. We witnessed about five cars come down and three semi-trucks. One of them, it didn’t even look like a car, it looked like a chunk of metal.”
Utt said motorists were tranquil, despite the traffic jam.
“There was no road rage or anything, everyone understood the severity of how bad this was before we even began to figure out what exactly happened,” he said.
Authorities reopened the northbound lanes Sunday night and hoped to have the other side cleared later in the evening.
Police did not instantly release the names of those killed.