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Dust storms make roads lethal |
| Name: |
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AV Press |
| Date Posted: |
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Oct 17, 07 - 4:06 PM |
| Email: |
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vrocha@avpress.com |
| Where are you from? |
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Antelope Valley |
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Dust storms make roads lethal
Pileups kill four, injure many more
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Wednesday, October 17, 2007.
By JAMES RUFUS KOREN and VERONICA ROCHA
Valley Press Staff Writers
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LANCASTER - At least four people died Tuesday afternoon on the Antelope Valley Freeway and the Highway 58 Mojave Bypass as dozens of cars and big rigs crashed amid blinding dust storms stirred up by winds topping 50 mph.
Dozens more people were injured in the crashes, which occurred on the northbound Antelope Valley Freeway just south of Avenue B, on Business Route 58 in Mojave and on the Highway 58 bypass northwest of Mojave. The freeway and the bypass were closed to traffic for hours because of the wrecks and the blowing dust and wind.
"It was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom for 10 or 15 minutes," said Gary Goerges, a Northern California motorist who was at the north end of the Antelope Valley Freeway pileup.
Goerges said the car in front of him stopped suddenly and he rear-ended it, then pulled off to the side of the freeway. As he waited, he said he heard multiple collisions occurring behind him.
The Antelope Valley Freeway collision involved four semi-trucks, a transit bus and nearly two dozen passenger vehicles, strewing wreckage across northbound lanes for 200 yards.
Two men died, and CHP Officer Henry Ross said 25 people, including some critically injured, were transported to area hospitals from the Antelope Valley Freeway crash.
On the Mojave bypass, the dead were a motorist and a passenger, both men about 50 and 70, who were killed in crashes 100 yards apart on the eastbound lanes near Exit 167, California Highway Patrol officials said. In all, the Mojave crashes involved at least a half-dozen vehicles, CHP officials said. The crashes injured eight people, including a woman whose vehicle was crushed by a big rig toppled by wind on Business Route 58. Pinned in her vehicle, she suffered major injuries, CHP officials said.
No names of the dead or injured were immediately released.
At the Antelope Valley Freeway crash site, shattered side-view mirrors, cracked headlights and shards of metal, glass and plastic lay across the pavement. A semi-truck rear-ended one car, ripping its trunk open and spilling its contents - including a child's stroller and an artist's sketch pad - into the desert.
"The dust was blowing and semis couldn't see what was going on," said Trevor Memmott, an elder with a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints group. The crash left a large dent in the rear bumper of the crew cab pickup truck occupied by Memmott and five other teens. The teens, on their way from Lancaster to Ridgecrest, parked their damaged truck in the ditch next to the freeway.
In all, 26 vehicles showed at least minor damage, and a dozen more were stopped in traffic lanes, on the shoulder and in the dirt next to the Antelope Valley Freeway.
Shortly after 2 p.m., not long after the pileup started, the median between north- and southbound lanes was filled with emergency vehicles. Paramedics worked on victims, including a man who appeared to have been pulled from the wreckage of a passenger van that rear-ended a Sears service van, which, in turn, had slammed into the back of a semi-truck. The Sears van's horn blared for perhaps 15 minutes as paramedics worked.
One body lay on the left shoulder covered by a white sheet. Another lay under a semi-truck, covered by a tattered blue tarpaulin.
"I was going 30 or 40 when all of a sudden this bus stopped in front of me," said Mike Eyre, who was driving to Sacramento after visiting family in Palmdale. "The guy behind me stopped in time, but the guy behind him rear-ended him. It's totally tragic."
Eyre said he could hear other crashes happening behind him as he pulled his SUV onto the dirt shoulder and drove around the bus, then corrected himself: "Actually, I couldn't hear because of the wind."
Wind gusts were measured at 58 mph in Mojave, and at 47 mph at Fox Airfield in Lancaster.
Flying stopped at Mojave Air and Space Port because of the wind.
"Everybody's pretty well hunkered in," said Tom Weil, director of business development at the Mojave Airport.
No damage was reported at the airport, but portable toilets in a storage area blew through the surrounding fence.
"We pushed one off the roadway a while ago," Weil said.
Staff writer Allison Gatlin contributed to this story.
jkoren@avpress.com
vrocha@avpress.com |
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