Posted on 07/30/2005 7:17:16 AM PDT by Graybeard58
AVON -- Shocked drivers could do nothing as a runaway dump truck hurtled toward them down Avon Mountain and careened into cars and a bus during morning rush hour Friday.
It left a path of death, of twisted metal, of vehicles in flames and of people crying and screaming.
By nightfall, the death toll stood at four. Of the 30 people involved, 15 were injured, four critically.
Investigators waited for hours as crews searched cars burned beyond recognition for more victims. The medical examiner's office in Farmington said it will not release identities until Monday.
The tragedy started atop Avon Mountain on Route 44, when the 12-wheel rig, owned by American Crushing and Recycling LLC of Bloomfield and carrying a full load of sand, swerved from the west- into the eastbound lane. It apparently had a mechanical failure somewhere on the 1.4-mile-long hill shortly after 7:30 a.m., right before the intersection of Route 10 south, Nod Road and Route 44.
The road was jammed with traffic, mostly workers heading to Hartford. More than 22,000 vehicles pass through that intersection daily, many during morning and evening rush hours.
Somewhere on the hill, the truck swerved out of control.
"It was in the right-hand lane, it swerved into the middle lane and, then, as it went through the intersection, we believe it became airborne or at least went up on two tires," said Avon police Capt. Mark Rinaldo.
The truck started hitting cars, plowed into a Kelley Transit Co. commuter bus en route to Hartford from Winsted, and eventually tipped onto its driver's side. It hit a car waiting to turn left onto Nod Road near the Avon Old Farms Inn, Rinaldo said. It pushed that car and four or five others into the front of the bus and then slid into more cars behind the bus.
Its bucket forced into the up position by the impact, the truck blocked both westbound lanes of Route 44 when it finally came to rest.
It burst into flames, trapping the driver. People who came upon the crash, including a surgeon from Waterbury Hospital, struggled to reach him, but the fire was too intense.
They left him to help others -- in all, 30 people were involved.
When the crashing stopped, the fires started. The front of the bus and at least three cars burst into flames within moments, trapping some drivers. People tried to toss sand, spilled from the dump truck, onto the flames; at least one woman was pulled from a burning sedan thanks to their efforts.
Some of the dead were found burned in their cars.
"It was just basically a crunch, crunch, crunch, and then the fireball just lit up the sky," said Calvin Bensch of Canton, who works nearby. "And by the time I got to the end of the driveway, people were stopped at the intersection and getting out of their cars. People were scurrying. People were screaming. There was a woman who got out of her car, and she pulled her hair and she's wailing."
The burned husks and twisted frames of cars, most unrecognizable, were across the six lanes of Route 44. Debris as large as bumpers and as small as shattered glass was strewn over the road, onto the curb, up embankments, into a parking lot.
A pile of cars, one upside down, blocked the front of the bus, under which another car was stuck. The front of the bus itself was charred and had caved in where the truck struck it. The dump truck was on its driver's side in the westbound lanes of Route 44, most of its load of sand having blanketed its path.
Kyle Caruso, a maintenance supervisor at Avon Old Farms Hotel, rescued at least one driver from a black Mercury Cougar.
"I walked outside and all I saw was black smoke, so I just went running," said Caruso, 21, of Torrington. "I mean, I ran right across the intersection to help out whoever came first. Start with one, move to the next."
He and a co-worker, 40-year-old Mike Charpentier of Farmington, helped a victim onto grass and then went back looking for more people to help. In one case, Caruso said Charpentier tried to comfort a man who was trapped. Only the man's elbow was visible from the window of what was left of his car, he said.
Caruso said he used to ride the same commuter bus to Avon daily until he got a car.
Police also pulled four or five people from cars.
Within minutes after the crash, west of the accident scene, emergency vehicles lined the road partway back to the center of Avon. A ladder truck on the east side of the scene had a large red tarp draped over its ladder, to block the view of victims being recovered.
Four people were listed in critical condition Friday night, among them the driver of the commuter bus from Torrington. Eleven others had been treated and released, police said. The eight passengers on the bus, which was headed to Hartford, suffered minor injuries.
Investigators think the dump truck came into contact with each of the other 19 vehicles involved in the crash. All 19 were stopped at a red light in the four eastbound lanes of Route 44. Two of those are turning lanes.
Throughout the day, reconstruction teams poked though the wreckage, marking debris and crumpled cars with global positioning devices. Each car must be inspected individually. Pieces of what appeared to be the truck's brakes littered the hill; police at one point had 48 truck parts marked.
One team tagged, photographed and bagged the dozens of parts. Earlier in the day, investigators walked the hill and painted white circles around each part.
Recovery teams had the more grisly task of pulling corpses from their cars. That process began just before noon and lasted into the night. "It's pretty horrific," Rinaldo said. "Obviously, there was a fire involved, and it's a pretty gruesome scene."
The investigation will last weeks, he said.
David Tolly, a chef at Avon Old Farms Inn, said the inn set up a small area for emergency personnel to take breaks during the heat of the day. "We want to make sure they have enough to eat, to drink," he said. "Anything we can do to help, we're more than willing."
Route 44 was closed from Route 10 south and Nod Road to Route 10 north in Avon center all day and late into the night. Traffic was diverted to Route 185 through Simsbury or to Route 4 through Farmington.
The pileup triggered a mass-casualty response in Avon.
Capt. Rinaldo said 17 ambulances and two LifeStar helicopters responded to the scene. Police from more than a half-dozen agencies -- Avon, West Hartford, Berlin, Windsor, Farmington, Simsbury, the state and elsewhere -- helped secure the scene, investigate or direct traffic. Several local fire departments also responded.
The Avon Mountain section of Route 44 has a steady 9 percent grade for 1.4 miles. Connecticut's slopes aren't steep enough for the state to consider runaway truck ramps, which are used in some states with steeper grades, said Kevin Nursick, a state Department of Transportation spokesman.
"Connecticut is not geographically an area of runaway truck ramps," Nursick said. "It hasn't been a consideration for this hill, but obviously now, as a result of this, it could be on the table."
It was the first fatally there in years. State records report 39 crashes -- 30 of which resulted in injury -- along the Route 44 side of the intersection from 2002-2004. On the Route 10 side, there were 16 crashes, three of which resulted in injuries during the same period.
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Good Lord...reminds me of the scene in Final Destination2. How horrific.
It's at the base of a steep hill... but there's a sharp left turn you have to make before you come to the light. The hill is so steep that the truck must'a been braking on the decent. If the truckdriver knew his brakes were blown and went straight... he would'a avoided the packed intersection.
Then again, the engine-brake may have done that and he didn't know about the brakes till impact.
What a horror.
The article says truck brakes littered the hill, so he must have known he was in trouble way before he hit the intersection. It almost sounds like he tried to save his own skin by crashing into the cars in front of him to slow him down....?
Lived right next to I-91 in my 'yute'... saw a '4-fatal' back in the mid-60's. A car carrying 3 'diversified' heroin addicts jumped the median and went airborne into some dude with a 'vette.
They were searching the trees with spotlights(it was by an overpass) for bodies.
The focus thus far has been on the truck company's history of negligence but what is this driver's history? I thought I had heard at one time that he was a relatively new driver. Has anyone else heard anything?
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