Chain-Reaction I-5 Pileup Kills 1, Injures Dozens

Northbound Interstate 5 south of Orange County was closed for nearly five hours early Saturday after a car crash that killed an Irvine college student triggered a string of accidents involving more than 100 vehicles.

Officials said 30 people were hospitalized and many others suffered minor injuries in the massive traffic tie-up that was also blamed on heavy fog and poor driving.

The holiday weekend traffic crawled to a halt and was backed up about eight miles after the first accident, which took place shortly before 7 a.m. on the stretch of road bordering the Camp Pendleton Marine base. Even after traffic lanes were cleared around noon, rubbernecking drivers kept vehicles inching along, officials said.

“It was just a mess, you couldn’t see anything because of the fog but you could hear accidents all around,” said California Highway Patrol spokesman Ted Prola. “Cars were just parked all over the place, people were wandering all over the freeway in a massive state of confusion.”

“I’ve been here 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added.

The first accident occurred about 6:50 a.m. about seven miles north of Oceanside when a vehicle driven by Jeff Pranoto, 18, of Irvine, a student at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana, spun out of control and flipped after he apparently fell asleep at the wheel, according to the office of the San Diego County Medical Examiner.

Law enforcement officials had difficulty locating Pranoto’s next of kin Sunday but released his name in hope that someone could help authorities find the family of the man believed to be from Indonesia. Pranoto’s female passenger was thrown from the vehicle and was listed in serious condition at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.

Fog, typical this time of year, was not considered a factor in that crash, Prola said.

Traffic began building up as officials tried to clear the crash scene, but worsening fog triggered numerous pileups even as law enforcement tried to escort vehicles through the area, Prola said. The fast-moving blanket of fog limited visibility in some areas to 20 feet.

In one incident alone, at least 37 vehicles collided when one vehicle came to a sudden stop, causing a chain reaction, Prola said.

In another incident underscoring the poor visibility and chaos at the scene, a couple was critically injured after getting out of a vehicle to check for damage after being rear-ended by another vehicle. The man, identified as Donald Cline, 71, of Carlsbad, was struck by two vehicles while his wife, Velma, 77, was struck by another vehicle.

More than a dozen off-duty CHP officers were called into work, and other agencies also assisted. The Orange County Fire Authority sent four units to the scene, officials said.

Prola said it could take CHP officers days to unravel Sunday morning’s chain of events, but he said poor driving was a key component.

“People just don’t know how to drive in the fog,” he said. Drivers in such heavy fog should travel at 10 m.p.h.--at most--in order to stop on short notice, he said.

“The bottom line was people weren’t slowing down accordingly. We were fortunate we didn’t have another fatality, with this many vehicles involved and at this magnitude.

“When it’s like this I tell people to get off the freeway and wait until the fog lifts, I don’t care if it takes hours,” Prola said. “It’s just too dangerous to drive.”

The pileup placed a tremendous burden on the emergency rooms of area hospitals, particularly those in south Orange County where most of the victims were rushed by ambulance.

A total of 14 patients went to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, while nine went to Samaritan Medical Center in San Clemente and five to South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach.

“It’s been quite a scene here today,” said Gloria Lee, a nursing supervisor at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, where victims’ injuries ranged from moderate to critical.

Bee Strutton, the nursing supervisor at Samaritan, said all the hospitals in the area were advised to be prepared for an unusual influx of emergency patients.

“As a rule, we won’t take nine patients at once,” Strutton said. “It’s always busy here, but we got particularly busy this morning.”

Of the nine, seven of the patients arriving at Samaritan were treated for minor injuries and released, Strutton said. The two others were more seriously hurt and were admitted to the hospital for observation, Strutton said.

Of South Coast Medical Center five emergency patients, two were suffering from moderate injuries and three had minor injuries, said emergency room nurse Amiee VanNieuland.

Bad weather--especially fog--and driver error are almost always behind such colossal crashes, and California’s unique geography means visibility can often drop instantly, officials said.

Sunday’s incident was reminiscent of the two unrelated pileups last December on the Golden State Freeway in Gorman, when two people were killed and 27 injured in traffic tie-ups blamed largely on heavy fog that engulfed drivers without warning. Traffic on the state’s major north-south freeway was stalled for hours as a result.

In June, coastal fog and slippery driving conditions contributed to a multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 5 in Laguna Hills, shutting down the southbound lanes during the morning rush hours.

Orange County drivers have been bedeviled by poor visibility as cooling temperatures mix with an onshore sea breeze to form fog this time of the year, said meteorologist Dean Jones of WeatherData Inc., which provides weather forecasts for The Times.

Fog is also suspected of playing a role in Monday morning’s plane crash in Fullerton, when a pilot and his passenger slammed into a townhouse complex while trying to land. Both men aboard the plane were killed, along with a woman who was home at the time.

Poor weather made a visual landing impossible, and the man believed to be piloting the aircraft was not trained to bring the plane in without the assistance of the control tower, officials suspect.

Foggy conditions are expected to continue the next few days along the shoreline overnight and in the early morning, before burning off by midday, Jones said.