Posted on 12/23/2022 7:50:15 PM PST by EBH
Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers, turnpike personnel and first responders from several agencies remain on the scene hours after a multi-vehicle crash on the Ohio Turnpike left four dead and many injured Friday afternoon.
As of 9:10 p.m., 15 commercial vehicles are being cleared from the roadway. The crash happened eastbound between State Route 53 and State Route 4 in Sandusky County and eventually stretched into Erie County.
Forty-six vehicles were involved in the crash, according to OSHP Sgt. Ryan Purpura. At least three of the four victims were in different vehicles, and none of their identities have been released.
Officials have gone through the scene and are finishing a second sweep while removing cars, Purpura said.
The exact number of injuries has not yet been determined.
The turnpike remains closed in the area of the crash and officials are uncertain of when it may reopen.
Weather factored into the crash, OSHP confirmed. Everyone involved in the crash has been bussed to a facility to stay warm in the frigid temperatures.
The rescue effort has continued through white-out conditions.
Because the Ohio Turnpike is closed in both directions, eastbound traffic is being diverted off at exit 91 at State Route 53. Westbound traffic is being diverted off at exit 118 at State Route 250.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Four people who left home with a head full of plans for the next few days perhaps stretching to New Year’s Day and…WHAM! Not no more. RIP.
I don’t understand this criticism of people who want to be somewhere for the holidays. It unsettles me, the ungenerous attribution of motives to those people.
Sure, there are people who don’t want to go somewhere but feel compelled to do so, and that isn’t right. It is on them for doing something they don’t want to do, and endangering their lives and those of others.
But there are millions people who feel a gnawing need to be with those they love.
When I was in the military, young, and far from home, I went to great lengths to get home for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I would drive unsafely, long past the point of exhaustion, in terrible weather. I would take planes from Florida to the midwest in desperate attempts to get to New England.
And I didn’t do it because I felt societal pressure to go to a stupid family get together I had no interest in going to, and hanging around people I might dislike being around, or to get turkey to eat or presents under a tree.
I did it because I desperately loved the people I was trying to reach, and felt a nearly painful and obsessive longing to be with them at those important times of the years.
I grew up in a military family, and I recall at least one year where my father was deployed and could not be with us for Christmas. But he sent us a reel-to-reel tape of him from his ship that arrived right before Christmas. I was very young, but to this day, that memory of us sitting near the lit tree, and hearing my father’s voice come to us from the other side of the world as we listened in our pajamas was a magical and poignant one indeed.
I can still feel it now, a pang in my heart, at how all seven of us so far away from him missed having him there.
That is the thing. Nearly any weather can be traveled through with a relative cushion of safety, though it will take far longer. I have traveled hundreds of miles in blizzards on poorly plowed roads, creeping along at excruciatingly slow speeds, white-knuckled the entire time.
There are some weather conditions, and I have driven in them, that remove nearly all safe margin.
But I agree, the two biggest problems are people who don’t understand that in certain conditions all vehicles should be driven slowly and carefully, and the second part of the problem is, there are a lot of people on the roads.
As you said, there are vast quantities of people who feel that a 4WD vehicle is safe to drive at any speed in any weather, and that just isn’t so.
As a New Englander, I hated driving in Blizzards!! One day, after a boat show in Worcester, Mass, we took our boats out of there (the Civic Center) and it was a blizzard. I was towing a 20 foot boat and I was going slow, because I didn’t want an accident. At Sturbridge, I decided to get into the slow lane and sure enough, I was glad I did as in the midlane was an abandoned auto. We all made it home without any accidents.
There is a video taken by a dash camera on a tractor-trailer that shows two fatalities when the truck strikes a car and squashes the car against another stationary wrecked truck.
She finally had enough with my slow speed and decided to pass me.
I watched in my rear view mirror as she tried to pull over into the next lane which was unplowed and promptly did a 360 spin, then veering right off the highway and up the bank of the freeway........
That was 40 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Terrifying! Can you imagine flying in something like that?
Smart move on your part. Family can stay annoyed, it isn’t their lives at risk.
“Can you imagine flying in something like that?”
Nope.
Nah.
Not gonna do it.
I remember in around 1970 or 1970 stuck in Punxsutawney sleeping on the floor of a motel for three days. Our car had gone off the road in a blizzard between NJ and Cleveland. I don’t know how a truck driver saw us, but he did, and drove us in to town. I still get panic attacks when I remember it.
Of the first nine years in the military I spent four Thanksgivings and three Christmases on Alert. I also spent one Christmas Eve on Alert which means I got home sometime in the early afternoon on Christmas Day.
An Alert means in the early morning driving between 35 and 140 miles out into a farmer’s field in nowhere Kansas or North Dakota, going 40 or 70 feet underground and locking ourselves behind and eight-ton blast door with the keys to the ICBMs all the while hoping WWIII didn’t start.
It had to be done and we missed our families dearly while living in a world of unnatural light and the sound of communications gear and assorted mechanical systems taking our hearing away.
During my 20 years I got to go home one time to see my parents for Christmas. I wish it could have been more but the needs of my Country outweighed my wants.
The leftist are working to eliminate those problems. Just as they have done in other traditions.
Dispersing...like moving west in a covered wagon?
Of course back in the 19th century if you moved away, you likely never saw your left behind relatives again.
I think that’s a fine idea.
Thank you for your service, FRiend. I knew you would understand the sentiment.
You lived the Honor, Duty, Country credo, and on this Christmas Eve, I thank you, and those like you who make that drive into a cold, desolate, largely untracked American flatland to stand guard while the rest of us, in our houses with windows that are squares of golden light from the outside, get to be with those we love and remember good times.
I hope you get to remember those too, my Friend. Best wishes to you and yours for a very Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy, and prosperous year in 2023. We can wish it, right?
I thank you for your service as well. Being on those ships was not for the weak.
The Cold War was intense and we did what had to be done to deter and protect.
I also wish you the merriest of Christmases and an outstanding New Year. If we fight, and with God's blessing, we will prevail and it will be a good year. Take care, my Brother.
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