MASSIVE PILEUP ON I-94 IN
MICHIGAN, ONE DEAD, MANY INJURED, MULTIPLE VEHICLES ON FIRE. ICY CONDITIONS AND LOW VISIBILITY CONTRIBUTED TO THE CRASH
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(Reuters) - One person was killed and six cars and
semi-trailers set afire in a weather-related pileup of 50 to 70 vehicles on
Friday morning on Interstate 94 about 10 miles east of Kalamazoo, Michigan,
state police said.
The accident occurred about 10 a.m. local time and one
of the burning semis was carrying hazardous material, State Trooper O.J.
Hamilton told Reuters. He said icy conditions and low visibility contributed to
the crash.
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Fatal 150-Vehicle Michigan Pileup Prompts Evacuation
At least one person was killed and 10 were
injured Friday in a pileup affecting both the westbound and eastbound lanes of
a Michigan interstate, involving more than 150 vehicles — including a
semi-truck carrying fireworks that erupted into flames, according to police.
Interstate 94 was completely closed down due to the chain-reaction crash in
Battle Creek that started around 10 a.m., Michigan State Police Lt. Rick Pazder
told NBC News.
Vehicular traffic in a 3-mile radius of the crash was also being
evacuated because the semi-truck carrying fireworks had caught fire and a
nearby truck carrying Formic acid ignited, Pazder said. Anyone who lives in a
3-mile radius is also being asked by HAZMAT officials to evacuate their homes,
according to a statement from the Michigan State Police. Formic acid can cause
throat burns, coughing and nausea if inhaled according to the Centers for Disease Control.
A semi-truck driver was killed in the crash,
but is not yet being identified, Pazder said. Ten more people were injured and
brought to area hospitals, while more people who were less seriously injured
were brought to the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Battle Creek, Pazder
said. People involved in the crash who were not injured were being bused to
Galesburg-Augusta Primary School.
Pazder said visibility was poor due to
blowing snow at the time of the crash. He said he anticipated that the I-94
would be closed down for at least 12 hours.
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AT LEAST 1 DEAD
AFTER SEMI-TRUCK CARRYING HAZARDOUS MATERIAL EXPLODES AMID MASSIVE CAR PILEUP
At least one person has died after two massive car
pileups on I-94 near Galesburg, Michigan, State Police Lt. Rick Pazder
told Wood TV in Grand Rapids.
The weather-related pileup happened at around 10 a.m. ET.
The weather at the time of the crash included heavy snow with visibility of ¼
mile, according to the Detroit News.
Reuters puts the number of vehicles involved
between 50 and 60, while various local media put the amount at 90 or 115.
At least 16 people were taken to hospitals following the
accident, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette. One person is in serious
condition.
As the pileup ensued, at least six cars and
semi-trailers caught fire, according Reuters. One of the trucks was
reportedly carrying "hazardous material," while another
hauling 40 pounds of fireworks exploded, according to Fox 17.
Emergency and hazmat crew are on the scene,
and I-94 in both directions is currently closed. People within a 1-mile
radius are being asked to evacuate, according to Wood TV. Authorities,
believing most of the hazardous material burned off, lifted the 3-mile evacuation
radius.
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One person was killed and 22 injured in two accidents on I-94 in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on Friday, January 9, 2015.
GALESBURG - One person was killed and 22 injured in two accidents on I-94 in Kalamazoo County Friday.
State Police said late Friday that 193 vehicles were involved in the wreck: In the eastbound lanes, 26 semi trucks and 34 cars crashed; westbound, 50 semis and 83 semis crashed.
The crashes closed both eastbound and westbound lanes between Galesburg Exit 88 and Columbia Avenue Exit 92 in Battle Creek for hours beginning just before 10 a.m.
Michigan State Police said they didn't expect the highway to open before midnight Friday.
The lone fatality in the crash was identified by State Police as a truck driver, Jean Larocque, 57, of St.-Chrysostome, Quebec, south of Montreal.
Two firefighters were hurt when a load of fireworks exploded on one of the wrecked trucks, which caught fire. A wrecker driver also was injured at the scene, according to Lt. Rick Pazder of the Michigan State Police. All three were taken to a hospital for evaluation.
About a dozen vehicles that had crashed in the eastbound lanes, including the truck with fireworks and another with a load of formic acid, burned for hours.
Police established a one-mile evacuation area because of the acid but Pazder said that material was contained and the order was lifted.
Police officers, firefighters and paramedics from agencies in both Kalamazoo and Calhoun counties were at the scene.
State police said at least five police departments, 11 fire departments and nine ambulance and medical responders assisted at the scene.
The state activated a State Emergency Operations Center to coordinate response and recovery efforts by state and local governments.
Pazder said about 6 p.m. that wreckers were removing damaged vehicles and the number involved could rise above 123.
Firefighters battled a fire that destroyed several tractor trailers and cars in the eastbound lanes. The fire was punctuated about noon when a truck carrying a load of fireworks exploded, scrambling firefighters and lighting the sky. Pazder said he did not know how the quantity of fireworks in the truck.
Officials said slippery pavement along with wind and blowing snow may have caused the accident. Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller said it appears the first accident, involving nearly 10 trucks and some cars, was in the eastbound lanes.
Fuller said it was not clear whether westbound drivers also were affected by blowing snow or saw the accident across the median and slowed to avoid any vehicles crossing into their path.
"It was maybe a whiteout or they were slowing down to see if anything was coming over the median," Fuller said.
Pazder said the investigation is being conducted by the Michigan State Police and the cause remains undetermined.
The majority of smashed vehicles were in the westbound lanes, with jackknifed trucks and smashed cars littering the highway. Several vehicles were in the ditch and median.
Firefighters and paramedics stopped at each vehicle checking passengers and in some cases providing treatment.
Buses from the City of Battle Creek and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center took people involved to Galesburg-Augusta Primary School to protect them from temperatures barely above single digits and biting wind chills.
Officials at the school said about 2 p.m. that 136 people were at the school. Pazder said most were gone by about 5:30 p.m.
Firefighters said they contained diesel tank spills and also reported a leak in a tanker carrying milk.
Some victims were trapped in the wreckage; firefighters used power equipment to remove them. Patients were taken to Bronson Battle Creek, Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo and Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo.
Eight people taken to Bronson in Kalamazoo were reported in good condition and six taken to Bronson Battle Creek had minor injuries, according to hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Wyllie. Eight people were taken to Borgess for treatment.
The accident occurred at the 90 mile marker about halfway between Galesburg and Battle Creek and west of 46th Street. As the first accident occurred in the eastbound lanes vehicles began to pile up in the westbound lanes of the freeway, slamming one after another into vehicles ahead and the median barrier. Crashed vehicles stretched for hundreds of yards in the westbound lanes.
Battle Creek police and fire crews joined the response to the crash, city officials said. And two Battle Creek Transit buses were dispatched to the scene to carry uninjured crash victims from the scene, where it was 12 degrees late this morning, to Galesburg-Augusta Primary school serving as a warming shelter. By 1 p.m. most of the victims had been transported from the accident scene.
Traffic around the accident was heavy on county roads as motorists were detoured off and back on the freeway.
Meanwhile, Battle Creek police asked area residents to stay off the roads if possible on Friday as officers responded to many crashes across the area and devoted resources to the I-94 crash.
Snowfall reports from the region indicated that about a half-foot of snow fell in the Battle Creek area from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning.
The National Weather Service reported a 7-inch snow total near Galesburg and 9 inches in Kalamazoo. There was an 8-inch snow report from Delton and more than a foot of snow was reported near Grand Rapids.
Road conditions were made worse by high winds -- an overnight wind gust of 33 mph was reported at W.K. Kellogg Airport.
The city of Battle Creek reported Friday morning it had 21 trucks out plowing snow. It said it had started working to clear residential streets after working overnight to keep main thoroughfares clear in the drifting snow.
Area schools were closed because of the snowstorm. That included Kellogg Community College and Robert Miller College.
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GALESBURG, MI – Randall Kern was driving on eastbound Interstate 94 toward his home in West Branch when he noticed the semi-truck in front of him slam on its brakes.
The 56-year-old, who was coming back to Michigan after purchasing a red pickup truck in Houston, Texas, took evasive action after seeing the semi-truck in front of him, carrying a load of fireworks, suddenly slow down.
"250 miles still to go," Kern said. "I was following the guy with the fireworks and I almost hit him when he jammed his brakes up. I put on mine and my truck stopped. It skidded a little bit but it was under control and I stopped right on the shoulder next to him."
Looking behind him and seeing trucks approaching quickly, Kern's survival instinct kicked in.
He got out of his newly acquired red pickup truck and ran through freshly fallen snow up an embankment away from the roadway, he said.
"I jumped out and I ran away from it because I saw all the trucks coming and they couldn't stop," Kern said. "I jumped out and ran up through the trees to get away."
With an unobstructed view of the roadway, Kern watched as cars, trucks and semis piled on to one another for nearly five minutes, he said.
"I watched it all happen," Kern said. "A couple of trucks came skidding in there and hit. It was almost over with until that last truck that the guy was killed in, just came flying in there. It didn't even look like his tires were skidding.
"When he hit, because of the pileup, it was like a V-shape," Kern said, making a V by connecting the tips of his left and right index fingers. "He went in between."
Approximately 30 minutes after the initial accident on I-94 was when the fireworks in the truck Kern swerved to avoid started going off, he said.
Kern, along with other displaced motorists, were shepherded off of I-94 to the Galesburg-Augusta Primary School on Battle Creek Street where the American Red Cross had set up a disaster center, Kern said.
Randall
Kern had a ringside seat to the crash in Interstate 94 Friday morning.
Kern was driving a newly purchased pickup truck to his home in West
Branch from Houston, Texas.
"My truck, I could have just changed the flat tire on the front and
drive it away," Kern said. "They won't let nobody go because there was
hazardous waste or chemical or something spilled and they can't get
nobody there to hook a tow-truck to it and pull it out."
Jay Ellis, also directed to the disaster center, was driving to Battle Creek from Kalamazoo for work and was in front of the semi hauling the fireworks, he said.
Ellis applied the brakes on his Jeep Liberty to avoid hitting cars in front of him when a vehicle that wasn't able to stop in time struck him, he said.
"There was like two or three ahead of me," Ellis said. "There was a lot going on behind me. The next thing I knew, there was a chain-reaction happening on the other side."
Sandwiched between vehicles involved in the front portion of the crash, Ellis couldn't do anything other than stay in his vehicle and wait for help to arrive, he said.
"I couldn't pull off anywhere," Ellis said. "I put the car in park and gathered my thoughts. I had to call my work because I was on my way to work and let them know what was going on. I just kind of stayed in my Jeep until they made me leave."
When fireworks in the semi behind Ellis started going off, Ellis immediately wondered what was happening.
"I do know when they started going off I was like 'What was that?' Somebody around me said that one of the trucks had fireworks on it and they were starting to go off," Ellis said. "At that point they told everybody it wasn't safe and we needed to get out of here.
"I'm concerned about my car, it's still drivable," Ellis said. "My front bumper was smashed and my back bumper was smashed but for the most part the car was fine."
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One person was killed and 22 injured in two accidents on I-94 in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on Friday, January 9, 2015.
GALESBURG - One person was killed and 22 injured in two accidents on I-94 in Kalamazoo County Friday.
State Police said late Friday that 193 vehicles were involved in the wreck: In the eastbound lanes, 26 semi trucks and 34 cars crashed; westbound, 50 semis and 83 semis crashed.
The crashes closed both eastbound and westbound lanes between Galesburg Exit 88 and Columbia Avenue Exit 92 in Battle Creek for hours beginning just before 10 a.m.
Michigan State Police said they didn't expect the highway to open before midnight Friday.
The lone fatality in the crash was identified by State Police as a truck driver, Jean Larocque, 57, of St.-Chrysostome, Quebec, south of Montreal.
Two firefighters were hurt when a load of fireworks exploded on one of the wrecked trucks, which caught fire. A wrecker driver also was injured at the scene, according to Lt. Rick Pazder of the Michigan State Police. All three were taken to a hospital for evaluation.
About a dozen vehicles that had crashed in the eastbound lanes, including the truck with fireworks and another with a load of formic acid, burned for hours.
Police established a one-mile evacuation area because of the acid but Pazder said that material was contained and the order was lifted.
Police officers, firefighters and paramedics from agencies in both Kalamazoo and Calhoun counties were at the scene.
State police said at least five police departments, 11 fire departments and nine ambulance and medical responders assisted at the scene.
The state activated a State Emergency Operations Center to coordinate response and recovery efforts by state and local governments.
Pazder said about 6 p.m. that wreckers were removing damaged vehicles and the number involved could rise above 123.
Firefighters battled a fire that destroyed several tractor trailers and cars in the eastbound lanes. The fire was punctuated about noon when a truck carrying a load of fireworks exploded, scrambling firefighters and lighting the sky. Pazder said he did not know how the quantity of fireworks in the truck.
Officials said slippery pavement along with wind and blowing snow may have caused the accident. Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller said it appears the first accident, involving nearly 10 trucks and some cars, was in the eastbound lanes.
Fuller said it was not clear whether westbound drivers also were affected by blowing snow or saw the accident across the median and slowed to avoid any vehicles crossing into their path.
"It was maybe a whiteout or they were slowing down to see if anything was coming over the median," Fuller said.
Pazder said the investigation is being conducted by the Michigan State Police and the cause remains undetermined.
The majority of smashed vehicles were in the westbound lanes, with jackknifed trucks and smashed cars littering the highway. Several vehicles were in the ditch and median.
Firefighters and paramedics stopped at each vehicle checking passengers and in some cases providing treatment.
Buses from the City of Battle Creek and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center took people involved to Galesburg-Augusta Primary School to protect them from temperatures barely above single digits and biting wind chills.
Officials at the school said about 2 p.m. that 136 people were at the school. Pazder said most were gone by about 5:30 p.m.
Firefighters said they contained diesel tank spills and also reported a leak in a tanker carrying milk.
Some victims were trapped in the wreckage; firefighters used power equipment to remove them. Patients were taken to Bronson Battle Creek, Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo and Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo.
Eight people taken to Bronson in Kalamazoo were reported in good condition and six taken to Bronson Battle Creek had minor injuries, according to hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Wyllie. Eight people were taken to Borgess for treatment.
The accident occurred at the 90 mile marker about halfway between Galesburg and Battle Creek and west of 46th Street. As the first accident occurred in the eastbound lanes vehicles began to pile up in the westbound lanes of the freeway, slamming one after another into vehicles ahead and the median barrier. Crashed vehicles stretched for hundreds of yards in the westbound lanes.
Battle Creek police and fire crews joined the response to the crash, city officials said. And two Battle Creek Transit buses were dispatched to the scene to carry uninjured crash victims from the scene, where it was 12 degrees late this morning, to Galesburg-Augusta Primary school serving as a warming shelter. By 1 p.m. most of the victims had been transported from the accident scene.
Traffic around the accident was heavy on county roads as motorists were detoured off and back on the freeway.
Meanwhile, Battle Creek police asked area residents to stay off the roads if possible on Friday as officers responded to many crashes across the area and devoted resources to the I-94 crash.
Snowfall reports from the region indicated that about a half-foot of snow fell in the Battle Creek area from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning.
The National Weather Service reported a 7-inch snow total near Galesburg and 9 inches in Kalamazoo. There was an 8-inch snow report from Delton and more than a foot of snow was reported near Grand Rapids.
Road conditions were made worse by high winds -- an overnight wind gust of 33 mph was reported at W.K. Kellogg Airport.
The city of Battle Creek reported Friday morning it had 21 trucks out plowing snow. It said it had started working to clear residential streets after working overnight to keep main thoroughfares clear in the drifting snow.
Area schools were closed because of the snowstorm. That included Kellogg Community College and Robert Miller College.
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GALESBURG, MI – Randall Kern was driving on eastbound Interstate 94 toward his home in West Branch when he noticed the semi-truck in front of him slam on its brakes.
The 56-year-old, who was coming back to Michigan after purchasing a red pickup truck in Houston, Texas, took evasive action after seeing the semi-truck in front of him, carrying a load of fireworks, suddenly slow down.
"250 miles still to go," Kern said. "I was following the guy with the fireworks and I almost hit him when he jammed his brakes up. I put on mine and my truck stopped. It skidded a little bit but it was under control and I stopped right on the shoulder next to him."
Looking behind him and seeing trucks approaching quickly, Kern's survival instinct kicked in.
He got out of his newly acquired red pickup truck and ran through freshly fallen snow up an embankment away from the roadway, he said.
"I jumped out and I ran away from it because I saw all the trucks coming and they couldn't stop," Kern said. "I jumped out and ran up through the trees to get away."
With an unobstructed view of the roadway, Kern watched as cars, trucks and semis piled on to one another for nearly five minutes, he said.
"I watched it all happen," Kern said. "A couple of trucks came skidding in there and hit. It was almost over with until that last truck that the guy was killed in, just came flying in there. It didn't even look like his tires were skidding.
"When he hit, because of the pileup, it was like a V-shape," Kern said, making a V by connecting the tips of his left and right index fingers. "He went in between."
Approximately 30 minutes after the initial accident on I-94 was when the fireworks in the truck Kern swerved to avoid started going off, he said.
Kern, along with other displaced motorists, were shepherded off of I-94 to the Galesburg-Augusta Primary School on Battle Creek Street where the American Red Cross had set up a disaster center, Kern said.
Randall
Kern had a ringside seat to the crash in Interstate 94 Friday morning.
Kern was driving a newly purchased pickup truck to his home in West
Branch from Houston, Texas. Jay Ellis, also directed to the disaster center, was driving to Battle Creek from Kalamazoo for work and was in front of the semi hauling the fireworks, he said.
Ellis applied the brakes on his Jeep Liberty to avoid hitting cars in front of him when a vehicle that wasn't able to stop in time struck him, he said.
"There was like two or three ahead of me," Ellis said. "There was a lot going on behind me. The next thing I knew, there was a chain-reaction happening on the other side."
Sandwiched between vehicles involved in the front portion of the crash, Ellis couldn't do anything other than stay in his vehicle and wait for help to arrive, he said.
"I couldn't pull off anywhere," Ellis said. "I put the car in park and gathered my thoughts. I had to call my work because I was on my way to work and let them know what was going on. I just kind of stayed in my Jeep until they made me leave."
When fireworks in the semi behind Ellis started going off, Ellis immediately wondered what was happening.
"I do know when they started going off I was like 'What was that?' Somebody around me said that one of the trucks had fireworks on it and they were starting to go off," Ellis said. "At that point they told everybody it wasn't safe and we needed to get out of here.
"I'm concerned about my car, it's still drivable," Ellis said. "My front bumper was smashed and my back bumper was smashed but for the most part the car was fine."