Massive 100 vehicle pileup closes Calif. highway, 2 dead

FRESNO, Calif. - More than 100 cars and trucks crashed on a fog-shrouded freeway Saturday, killing at least two people and injuring dozens more, the California Highway Patrol said. Eighteen big rigs were involved in the massive pileup on Highway 99 just south of Fresno as patches of dense fog obscured visibility on the heavily traveled roadway, CHP officials said.

"It looked like something out of a movie, walking up and seeing all the cars mangled and crushed," CHP Officer Paul Solorzano Jr. said.

A 6-year-old boy and a 28-year-old man traveling in separate vehicles were killed in the chain-reaction collisions around 7:45 a.m., he said.

"There was probably 2-foot visibility in the fog when I got here. It was really bad," said Mike Bowman, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "It looked like chaos. Cars were backed up on top of each other."

Rescuers had to extract several people from the wreckage, and paramedics took more than three dozen patients to the hospital with injuries, Fresno Fire Department spokesman Ken Shockley said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071103/ap_on_re_us/freeway_pileup

Horrible news. I'm glad more weren't killed though.

I watched news footage of the aftermath of the wreck. As Taximom said, CA is lucky that more people were not killed. Terrible wreck.

This is the second massive highway pile-up in California in the last month.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54903

Eight people have been charged and 40 others will be cited for speeding in connection with a massive foggy pileup on Highway 99 last November.

California Highway Patrol officials now blame motorists driving at unsafe speeds in low visibility.

http://cbs13.com/local/highway.99.pileup.2.756236.html

Good! I figured most drivers would blame the fog and road conditions in hopes of keeping out of trouble.

Everybody is always in such a hurry to go freaking NO WHERE! I don't understand why people don't slow down when the road conditions, vision distances are crappy.

I live in this part of CA - Kern County, where we get the thick Tule fog every winter. You would not BELIEVE how the commuters from Bakersfield to LA drive (we have alot of transplanted LA'ers here due to the low cost of housing)!!! They drive like it is a clear, sunny day - doing 70 to 75 mph, when I can only see two white road stripes in front of me, and I'm high up in a SUV. I'm surprised that there are not more accidents like this.