At least 50 cars were involved in a traffic pileup this morning as thick fog reduced visibility on the Sam Houston Tollway.
Broadcast reports said about 22 people had been injured, but there were no reports of fatalities.
The pileup happened about 7:30 a.m. and traffic was stalled in both directions of the tollway in southwest Harris County.
What a horrific scene. Prayers for all involved...
More details here:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1718336
Dec. 29, 2002, 10:32AM
Massive pileup injures 23, but no one killed
By PEGGY O'HARE
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
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Heavy, dense fog Saturday morning caused one of the largest chain-reaction traffic collisions in Houston's history, sparking a fire that engulfed a number of cars on the West Sam Houston Tollway.
When it was over, an estimated 75 vehicles were wrecked and nine burned. No one was killed, but 23 people were taken to area hospitals, five of them with serious injuries, said Dr. David Persse, the Houston Fire Department's physician director of emergency medicine.
The spectacular pileup in far southwest Houston occurred on both eastbound and westbound lanes of the Sam Houston Tollway on an overpass spanning South Main.
Wreckage stretched almost the entire length of the bridge, an estimated half-mile to three-quarters of a mile. Emergency officials said it was the biggest wreck they could recall since a 1976 ammonia truck crash at the interchange of the West Loop and U.S. 59 that killed seven and injured 150.
Saturday's chain-reaction crash happened just before 7 a.m. when drivers on the tollway reached a smothering patch of fog and found themselves with zero visibility.
"For about 10 or 15 minutes, it was just total chaos," said motorist Mike Young, 45, one of those caught up in the mass collision. "It was one of those situations where you were helpless -- you couldn't do anything.
"Nobody was hitting the brakes. All you could see was people flying by, and they disappeared, plowing into other cars. You couldn't even see them -- you could hear them running into each other," Young said.
The collisions continued for three to five minutes. The fire started five to 10 minutes later, igniting one vehicle and spreading to others.
As other cars burned nearby, bystanders freed one man suffering from chest pains while he was trapped in his pickup, which had been run over by a concrete truck.
Dr. Audrey Lacour, who was on her way to work when her car was involved in the pileup and burned, helped stabilize and check on two of those most seriously hurt. The minute she stepped out of her wrecked vehicle wearing her white coat and her stethoscope around her neck, people were directing her to those who needed help.
"The adrenaline was flowing," said Lacour, a first-year resident in Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital's family practice program.
Lacour said it was her first experience stumbling upon such an emergency on her way to work: "This was the first time that you're in a situation you had to really think about why you are what you are. People were like, `I'm sorry to bother you.' I was like, `That's what I'm here for.' "
Lacour quickly assessed two of those most seriously hurt -- one being the man with chest pains and a broken leg, the other a man with a broken arm and head contusions -- and made sure they were breathing and staying still.
Emergency officials said the scene was unreal.
"It looked like a battlefield -- vehicles in all kinds of positions, burnt, car fires still going," said Capt. Ray Valenta of the Harris County Precinct 5 Constable's Office. "It's just (like) something you see out of a movie. You just don't expect it to happen, but it does happen."
"It was surreal," said motorist Madonna Yancey, 42, of Missouri City. "People were running, people were screaming."
Weather conditions in Houston were perfect Saturday morning for the formation of a particularly dangerous type of fog known as ground fog, said National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Roeseler. Unlike sea fog, which tends to blanket the entire region, ground fog appears in patches near waterways, giving drivers little warning.
"You don't have a lot of time to react," he said. "You hit the patch and then everyone slams on the brakes."
The fog was not pervasive along the Sam Houston Tollway, but appeared suddenly. Many drivers likened it to hitting a white wall. Driver Veronica Valle, 25, said the blanket of fog was so thick that her instincts told her to stop immediately. Visibility, she said, "was zero, zero -- probably negative and zero. Just nothing.
"I could see nothing -- absolutely nothing -- and that's why I completely stopped. I was like, forget this. I could smell rubber. I didn't see anything, I just stopped. All of the sudden, I just felt boom, boom, boom," Valle said.
Some counted themselves lucky that their cars did not plunge off the elevated freeway. "At one moment, I thought we were going to go over the rail," said motorist Joyce Miller, 45, of Houston.
Emergency officials don't believe smoke from a two-alarm, pre-dawn fire that swept through a carpet warehouse about a mile from the crash site contributed to the poor visibility on the tollway. Houston firefighters said the wind actually blew that smoke away from the tollway.
Although some vehicles were reduced by fire to hulks of metal with their tires melted away, none of those injured suffered burns, Persse said. The four or five most seriously hurt had broken arms or legs, Persse said, and one driver's index finger was amputated. The nearly two dozen injured were taken to Memorial Hermann, Memorial Hermann Northwest, Memorial Hermann Southwest, St. Joseph, Ben Taub and Memorial Hermann Fort Bend hospitals.
Because there were so many cars damaged, traffic investigators had to spray paint numbers on them to keep track of the order of the collision. Half of the wrecked vehicles were on one side of the tollway and an almost identical number were on the other side. Metro furnished two buses to give rides to stranded motorists whose wrecked vehicles were towed.
"Seems like these kinds of things happen up north, not down here in South Texas," said Capt. Jesse Mack of the Harris County Precinct 7 Constable's Office.
The spectacular crash was a wrecker driver's dream -- masses of tow trucks filled up available space on the bridge, waiting to haul away the crumpled cars. Later, cleaning crews used street sweepers and shovels to clear blackened ash coating the tollway's westbound lanes.
The eastbound lanes of the tollway over South Main opened shortly after noon, but the westbound side where the fire occurred remained closed longer as emergency crews continued cleaning up. Those lanes opened later Saturday afternoon.
Federal officials with the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington contacted local authorities to gauge the extent of the pileup and to ask if there was any structural damage to the bridge. Inspections later Saturday turned up no signs of structural damage, Harris County Toll Road Authority officials said.
Chronicle reporter Edward Hegstrom contributed to this story.
I was listening to my scanner when this started. The Police Department seemed to do the best they could with their resources. There was some confusion initially about the exact location and as usual the HPD is woefully short of officers. Remember, Houston has an administration that thinks social programs and outright political payoffs are more important than basic services such as Police, Fire, water and waste collection.
