2 Die, 27 Injured in Pileups on I-5 : Accidents: Dozens of vehicles on both sides of the freeway collide in heavy fog in the Tejon Pass near Gorman. The road is closed for hours.

Chain-reaction pileups Wednesday on the Golden State Freeway--apparently caused by heavy fog that blanketed the mountainous Tejon Pass--killed two people, injured 27 and closed California’s major north-south freeway for hours, authorities said.

With visibility suddenly cut to just two feet shortly after noon, 30 to 40 cars and 10 to 15 big rigs smashed into each other on the southbound side of Interstate 5 near Gorman, about 65 miles north of Los Angeles.

Across the freeway, on the northbound side, 10 to 12 cars slammed together, said CHP spokeswoman Shirley Gaines.

The crash on the southbound side produced both fatalities--a trucker whose body remained in the crushed cab of his rig for hours and a woman who was pronounced dead on arrival at a Santa Clarita hospital.

“It was so foggy you couldn’t see nothing,” said Pete Hand of Durand, Okla., a motorist caught--but not hurt--in the pile on the southbound Golden State Freeway.

Letitia Burton, a teacher from Mountain View, and her 12-year-old daughter were also heading south on the freeway when the weather turned “extremely foggy, scary foggy,” Burton said.

Their 1989 Plymouth minivan smacked into a black car directly ahead. Seconds later, a U-Haul truck hit them from behind.

“There were people walking around, cars all crumpled. We could smell gas,” she added. “I just feel we were really blessed to be alive. Angels were watching us.”

The wreckage Wednesday in the Tejon Pass was fearsome. The carcasses of cars littered the median, and a cluster of big rigs--some twisted but still upright, others on their sides--sprawled across the southbound lanes. On the nearby shoulder smoked the twisted and black metal hulks of two burned trucks.

The northbound lanes of the freeway were opened within a couple hours after the accident. But the southbound lanes remained closed into the evening, causing a backup several miles long. Drivers stood around the wrecks, shivering in the rain and occasional snow that hindered the cleanup. Some drivers and police officers gathered near a burning truck in an effort to stay warm.

One family huddled in blankets, the younger of two boys clutching a stuffed teddy bear.

Fog is common in the Tejon Pass, which rises to 4,144 feet and carries the Golden State Freeway through the Tehachapi Mountains. A cold front moved through the area Wednesday, combining cool air and moisture to produce heavy fog near Gorman, just a few miles south of the pass, weather officials said.

Visibility “drops real fast up there,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Rick Miler. “It starts raining, and all of a sudden, boom, there’s fog.”

Details of what set off the chain reactions on both sides of the freeway remained sketchy late Wednesday. Motorists, police and fire officials said both pileups began about 12:30 p.m.

In the southbound lanes, “there was an accident, and other vehicles could not avoid that and there was a pileup,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Inspector Mark Savage.

More than a dozen big rigs and several cars formed the main cluster of wrecks on that side, officials said.

Near the front, the driver of a truck carrying wood planks slammed head-on into a milk truck, Savage said. The lumber truck driver, in a rig marked with a brown and yellow sign from J & J Trucking of San Diego, was killed.

His body was pinned for five hours in the cab, until 5:40 p.m., officials said. His name was withheld pending notification of his family.

A 25-year-old woman also involved in the southbound crash was taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Further details about her were not available.

In another big rig traveling south, Albert Rodriguez, 11, and his father, Jose, were near the front of the pileup.

“We saw these sticks on the road,” Albert said, apparently referring to wooden planks, “and everyone started stopping. And then everyone started crashing into each other.”

Hand, on vacation from Oklahoma with his wife, said he was driving about 35 m.p.h. and several car-lengths behind another car, when “this pickup came up from behind and walloped the stuffing out of us.” Other vehicles, he said, then rammed into the pickup, which banged repeatedly against his car.

At the back of the cluster, a big rig carrying 1,000 bags of cat litter smashed into the back of another truck carrying lumber. Both trucks caught fire.

“I saw him up ahead,” said the driver of the truck carrying the cat litter, Edgar Gacobo, 35. “I put my brakes on, but I slid right into him.” Gacobo was not hurt.

The injured were taken by ambulance and by helicopter to hospitals stretching from Lancaster to Northridge. Six of the injured went to Newhall Memorial, 11 to Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, four to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and six to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

The crashes marked the state’s second major fog-related chain-reaction pileup this year. On Jan. 15, in a series of eight rapid-fire accidents, more than 70 vehicles piled into each other on California 99 between Livingston and Selma, killing two people and injuring more than 60.

The pileups near Gorman were not the only accidents on that stretch of freeway Wednesday. Stretching back to the Kern County line were a series of fender-benders involving at least seven cars and four of the injured, Savage said.

Times staff writers Michael Arkush, John Chandler and Phil Sneiderman, and special correspondent Maki Becker contributed to this report.