At Least 5 Die as 36 Vehicles Crash in Fog

At least five people were killed and 26 injured Thursday in a fiery crash of big trucks and passenger cars on a fog-shrouded stretch of Interstate 5, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Other motorists, who narrowly avoided the grinding collision and resulting fuel tank explosions during the busy morning commute north to Sacramento, rushed to aid the injured.

The dead included an unidentified 5-year-old child, whose anguished mother ran about the crash site screaming for help. Truck drivers rushed to her mangled car but found it enveloped in flames and were unable to save the youngster.

The crash occurred at sunrise and involved 36 vehicles, including an empty tanker truck and eight other big rigs. It left a warlike scene of mayhem scattered for a quarter-mile about 12 miles south of the capital.

One truck driver--Bill Marshall, 51, of Empire, near Modesto--likened barreling into the embankment of white tule fog to “going from a [sunlit] beach to a dark room” and then hearing “bam, bam, bam” as the chain-reaction collision spread.

“Everybody did everything they could to stop,” said another shaken witness. One CHP officer described visibility as zero.

The interstate, one of California’s busiest corridors of commerce, was closed in both directions throughout the day and into the night as emergency crews searched for possible additional victims and worked to clear still-smoldering ruins.

More than six hours after the crash, the highway, soaked with diesel fuel spilled from truck tanks, remained littered with the burned-out hulks of semis and unrecognizable passenger cars crushed between them. Other wrecked vehicles cluttered the median.

“Some of the cars are welded together because of the heat,” said CHP spokesman Brent Carter. He also said some drivers “had nowhere to go but into the backs of others.”

A small army of police, firefighters, chaplains and other emergency workers descended on the scene, as officials announced that it would be many hours before the dead could be removed from the wreckage.

Officials, who set up a temporary morgue on the median, said those killed had been burned so badly that they could not be immediately identified. They feared that more victims might be found as searchers gingerly cleared the incinerated trucks and cars.

Firefighters moved from one charred vehicle to another, looking for survivors and the deceased. Where a body was found, the site was marked in yellow chalk with the word “fatal.”

“We’ll know more as we pull vehicles apart and extricate victims,” said Fire Chief Mark Meaker of Elk Grove, a nearby town. He said it was doubtful anyone else would be found alive.

The inferno, fed by about 700 gallons of spilled diesel fuel, occurred in a lightly populated rural region. It sent pillars of black smoke soaring into the blue sky above the ground-hugging fog.

Witnesses said that visibility had been fine and that the morning commute was moving smoothly. Then, without warning, the fog bank emerged and stretched across the highway in both directions.

“It’s a classic fog crash,” said CHP spokeswoman Anne Richards. “The sky was clear both north and south, and then they ran into a wall of fog. The lead vehicle slowed very abruptly and then the crashes started.”

During the winter tule fog season, multiple-vehicle crashes have become a tragic but common occurrence in the vast Central Valley, from Bakersfield in the south to Redding in the north.

Typically, the CHP blames these pileups not only on the dense fog, but on the failure of drivers to slow down in it. Officers said they didn’t know whether excessive speed played a role in Thursday’s collisions.

Truck driver Marshall said visibility was “as good as it gets” until he entered the blanket of fog and began braking his unloaded tractor. All he could see was the glare of brake lights ahead, he said.

Then his rig collided with something. “I had no idea what I hit or what hit me. I rolled out of the cab and heard ‘bam, bam, bam’ behind me,” he said.

Marshall spotted a trucker who had been thrown from his cab and landed on the median with a broken leg. He and another driver aided the victim.

“By then, fire had broken out in the rigs behind me. I tried spraying with my extinguisher, but it didn’t do any good,” Marshall said. “I could hear tires popping, fuel tanks exploding, all of it happening in a roaring inferno.”

Marshall said that a voice called for help but that he couldn’t find the source. “All we could see was fog, black smoke and flames,” he said.

Husband and wife truckers Jerry and Michelle Carlson suffered only bruises when their big rig, which had slowed to about 35 mph, struck the back of another truck.

“There was no getting around it,” Michelle Carlson said.

Twenty-three injured people were taken by ambulance or helicopter to five Sacramento area hospitals. Three others were reportedly treated at the scene and released.

Seven of the most seriously hurt were transported to UC Davis Medical Center, where a spokeswoman said their conditions ranged from fair to serious. None was in critical condition.