15 Die, 50 Hurt as Thick Fog Triggers 75-Vehicle Pileup

Two chain-reaction crashes in dense fog on a highway in southeastern Tennessee killed 15 people Tuesday, injured more than 50 and left the roadway looking like a war zone.

A morning fog covered Interstate 75 over the Hiwassee River, about 40 miles north of Chattanooga, when the 75-vehicle pileup began about 9:30 a.m., said Cecil Whaley, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

People involved in the accident, which covered more than a mile of the interstate, described hearing booms in the fog as dozens of tractor-trailers collided with each other and with cars.

Traveling salesman Ralph Fisher, 43, of Cleveland, Tenn., was headed north when he hit the fog patch. He said he noticed traffic slowing down, so he pulled to the roadside.

“After that I started hearing bangs and booms from everywhere. Immediately after that there was a truck on fire from across the road. We stared hearing them banging and booming from over there. Then, all of a sudden, you started hearing them from everywhere,” Fisher said.

Whaley confirmed 15 dead but said the number could rise as crews searched the burned shells of vehicles. In some cases, only nameplates distinguished the wreckage of cars smashed into the sides of trucks.

“This is one of the worst accidents that anyone can remember happening in Tennessee, in terms of the number of vehicles and fatalities involved,” said Whaley, who followed rescue efforts from his Nashville office.

Names of the victims could not be immediately released because some of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, Whaley said.

Authorities believe that an initial accident occurred in the southbound lanes and that cars jumping the median or people rubbernecking to see the southbound crash may have caused the second pileup in the northbound lanes.

“There’s unbelievable stories of tremendous bravery,” Whaley said. “Firefighters were dragging out people whose trucks were on fire. They were getting them out just ahead of the flames.

“There were a number of motorists who stopped to help. They were taking off their own clothes to bandage people. People were actually on fire, and they were beating out the flames.”

Russell Newman, eastern district regional director of the Tennessee Emergency Medical Agency, says no one is really sure what happened.

“It’s just a conjecture as to what caused it, but it was just one of those damn chain-reaction collisions that happen in this kind of situation--very heavy fog and probably too much speed,” Newman said.

In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board said it was dispatching a team of six experts in highway and hazardous-material investigations.