Rolling Thunder on the Highways

The fast-moving, 30-ton big rig that flipped over on the Artesia Freeway crushed the red Jeep Cherokee like a soda can. It was 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 12, 1998, and this was the 31st truck crash of the day in California.

More than a hundred were still to come.

Driver Eusebio Solis was 6 1/2 hours into his workday, cruising through Buena Park, when his rig loaded with fresh fruit jackknifed and toppled. He scrambled out of the cab to check for injuries. When Solis saw the flattened Jeep, he lost it.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” the 35-year-old screamed, pacing back and forth in the road, his hands holding on his head. Then he walked to the side of the freeway, sat down and cried.

Jeffrey Crouse had been so close to the crash he could have reached out his car window and touched the wreck. He rushed to help the Jeep’s driver, but he peered into the front seat and knew there was no hope.

One year ago last Thursday, 139 truck accidents--one every 10 minutes--took place in clear weather on California’s highways, streets and back roads. They ranged in geography from San Diego to Siskiyou County. Most were minor, but two crashes were deadly, claiming four lives.

It wasn’t the busiest day of the year for truck accidents, nor the slowest.

Big-rig crashes usually capture attention only when the death toll is high, such as last week’s tragedy on a rural road outside Fresno that killed 13 farm workers. One week earlier, six people died--including a family of four in their minivan--when a truck lost its load of concrete pipes on a Mojave Desert highway.

The events of Aug. 12, 1998, were more ordinary. From the vantage point of a year later, they provide a glimpse into the everyday toll of big-rig accidents--from the costs of cleanup to the economic and social toll of massive traffic jams to the personal struggles to overcome trauma, injuries and fear.

Survivors of that day’s worst crashes still grieve--a nightgown has gone unwashed because it smells faintly of a wife who died. A “For Sale” sign has gone up at the dream home of an immigrant couple who worked for years to own it, only to see their hopes dashed in a mangle of metal at a rural intersection.

The Artesia Freeway accident alone has generated a tab in excess of $1 million--from a $7,145 funeral for the driver of the Jeep Cherokee to a spoiled load of pineapples and melons valued at about $35,000. A Times analysis estimated that traffic congestion around the accident cost commuters about $270,000 in lost time and wages.

A recent Southern California Assn. of Governments study put the truck accident toll for the region at more than $1.2 billion each year.

Large trucks are becoming more numerous on the road as demand increases for instant delivery of freight to retailers and consumers. Truckers are under greater pressure to work long hours, make trips quickly and fill their rigs to capacity.

In California, 1.3 million trucks hit the road each day--by far the largest number in the country. Each year, truck accidents kill about 400 people in the state and about 5,000 people nationwide--numbers that have remained flat despite the significant jump in truck traffic.

Trucks are involved in a disproportionate number of traffic fatalities: 13% of deaths in 1997 while accounting for 7% of total vehicle miles traveled. When someone dies in a truck-car collision, 98% of the time it’s the occupants of the automobile.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 26,000 people in 1996 suffered serious brain injuries or loss of a limb in the 393,000 truck accidents that year.

Although traffic fatalities in California have dropped about 12% in the last five years, deaths involving large trucks have remained relatively steady, dropping slightly one year only to rebound the next. Only in about half of accidents are truck drivers found to be at fault. Often the blame lies with car drivers, many of whom disregard trucks’ blind spots and longer braking distances.

Aug. 12, 1998: Midnight Madness

The day began extraordinarily badly.

Seconds before midnight, a big rig rounded a bend in a construction zone on the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim, slamming into stopped traffic. Twenty-one people--many of them families returning from a day at nearby Disneyland--were taken to hospitals. Three cars were incinerated.

The fiery crash closed the freeway in both directions for nine hours, well into the morning rush hours.

During the morning commute, the traffic news was grim on local radio. Reporters on KNX-1070 warned motorists to expect a bad start to their day:

The 5 remains shut down in Anaheim in both directions, and of course it’s affected a lot of other freeways. 405 north in Orange County is affected by it. The 22 both directions in Orange County affected by this one problem on the 5.

Hundreds of thousands of people affected undoubtedly in one way or another.

605 bumper to bumper from Rose Hills on down to Los Alamitos.

When the phone rang at 6:15 a.m. at her Irvine home, Patricia Coon, 58, had been up for some time. Her husband, Russ, just off an overnight shift as a pharmacist, was on the other line.

“Hey, babe, this is your wake-up call,” he remembered telling his wife of 37 years.

“Oh, I’ve been up for a while worrying about you driving on no sleep,” he recalled her saying.

Three months into retirement, Russ had worked that night as a favor to his old boss. He was glad to be done. The next day, he and Pat were heading out on a cross-country trip.

The Coons had plans to meet at Camping World in La Mirada when it opened at 8 a.m. to get a tow hitch installed. The call was to make sure Pat would get on the road in time.

Russ Coon hung up and headed to a nearby Denny’s for a pancake breakfast.

“How do I get to Irvine?” asked a trucker who paused at Coon’s table.

“It’s just 23 miles down the 5 freeway,” Coon replied. “My wife’s on her way up that freeway to meet me now.”

The trucker told Coon about the crash that night on the Santa Ana Freeway that had shut down both directions of traffic.

Coon reached for his cell phone again. He didn’t like the idea of Pat being stuck in that mess. The phone rang several times.

“I was in the garage ready to leave,” Pat said, slightly out of breath.

“Babe, I’m going to have to change your route,” he told her. “Take the 5 to the 22 to the 605 and then head east on the 91.”

She said OK.

The call haunts him still. If only he hadn’t talked to the trucker. If only she hadn’t picked up the phone.

“I gave Pat the directions that put her on that road,” he says now. “I put her on that road where she was killed.”

A Single Day’s Litany of Wrecks

In a small one-story home in the San Joaquin Valley farming community of Lindsay, Helvia Sepulveda Sanchez had been out of bed since 5 a.m.

There was too much to do to linger. She had four children to care for and her husband--a long-distance trucker--was on the road as usual.

She was in a good mood this morning. Today she would see a specialist an hour away in Delano. He might finally relieve the pain in her leg that had been aching for two years as she stood packing oranges at a nearby plant for $6.30 an hour.

Around 6:30 a.m.--just after Russell Coon was speaking to his wife on the cell phone for the first time--Helvia went to her children’s rooms to wake them up. She was their only alarm clock.

By 7 a.m. Sanchez was on her way to work. She would meet up with her children again that afternoon, and they would make the drive to the doctor’s appointment together.

Around the state, the truck-involved accidents piled up:

7 a.m. In San Diego, a U.S. Marine truck backed into a car on a city street.

7:10 a.m. In Santa Barbara, a pickup broadsided a big rig towing double trailers full of gravel.

7:35 a.m. In Contra Costa County, a pickup driving on the wrong side hit a three-axle dump truck.

7:40 a.m. A Sacramento city dump truck going too fast into an intersection overturned, skidding 30 feet before coming to a stop.

7:50 a.m. A truck in Monterey County overturned.

8:06 a.m. In Kings County, a man in a pickup was hurt when he swerved into a tractor-trailer.

On KNX radio, news of the second major SigAlert of the morning in Southern California came across: Now we hear there is a crash on the 91 near the Valley View offramp with several if not all lanes blocked with a big rig on top of a car. Terrible crash there.

Russ Coon slept in his car in the Camping World parking lot, waiting for his wife to arrive. At 8:30 a.m. he woke with a start, his heart pumping. Where was Pat? She should have been there by now. He got out of the car and walked around the parking lot.

Delays made everyone in the Coon family nervous. They knew it could mean the worst.

One of the Coons’ four children, Jenny, had been killed in a Halloween traffic accident 17 years earlier. She was just 14 when a car ran a stoplight and slammed into the vehicle she was riding in.

He phoned his eldest daughter in Lake Forest. She hadn’t heard from her mom. But Coon knew the traffic that morning was a nightmare, so he tried not to panic. He couldn’t leave. What if Pat pulled up and he wasn’t there? He phoned his neighbor. Could she check the house for Pat?

The minutes became hours. At 10:30 a.m. Coon offered a silent prayer: Lord, let Pat be all right. Bring her safely to me. I can’t live without her. I need her by my side. Please grant this request to me.

Out loud he spoke to her: “Come on, Pat! You’re out there. Drive up! Come on, Pat, I need you.”

Less than two miles away, a fire department crew was working to free Pat Coon from her Jeep Cherokee. It had been two hours since the truck driven by Eusebio Solis had jackknifed in stalled traffic when he attempted to go from 50 mph to 0 in half the distance he needed to stop safely. The trailer tipped and fell onto the Jeep, crushing the driver’s side. The coroner’s van was standing by to take Pat’s body to the morgue.

In Solis’ cab, police found two speeding tickets. The Miami-based driver was cited for making an unsafe movement. This April, prosecutors charged Solis with vehicular manslaughter. He failed to show up at a court hearing in June, prompting officials to issue a bench warrant for his arrest.

On the day of the accident, thousands of commuters on both sides of the freeway were caught up in the aftermath.

At a point on the freeway where as many as 14,000 cars pass each hour, the accident was crippling and expensive. Although the cost to any one bystander may have been minimal, the overall impact added up. The Times’ analysis estimated that the Artesia Freeway accident alone resulted in 24,000 hours in delays for motorists.

At 11:30 a.m. Russ Coon was still waiting in the parking lot with no word. He had not turned on the car radio. He avoided the store’s waiting room, where the television was tuned to the local news.

He was afraid to watch.

Just after noon, Orange County sheriff’s Deputy Ken Bayless--Coon’s neighbor--pulled into the lot. Russ Coon looked at him, the fear growing in the pit of his stomach and traveling up his body.

Bayless enveloped his friend in a bear hug--holding on as tight as he could.

“There’s been an accident,” Bayless told him. “Pat’s with Jenny now.”

A Family Devastated

In the 2 1/2 hours it took emergency personnel to extract Pat Coon from her demolished vehicle, there were 29 more large truck crashes--from a big rig that slammed into another truck on Interstate 15 in Riverside to an 18-wheeler that took out a utility pole in Oakland.

Galia Gur was in the 55th crash of the day. She had left her home in the Oakland suburb of Piedmont that morning well after the rush of commuters.

Gur’s 18-month-old granddaughter, a family friend and her friend’s newborn son all packed into a blue Toyota Tercel for a trip to the mountains.

Driving across Route 580 in Richmond, just north of Berkeley, Gur saw an oversized box blocking her lane up ahead. Gur’s first instinct was to swerve out of the way--but a big rig was at her side.

Behind the Toyota going 50 mph on the busy freeway, trucker Ken Whicker could see the crate in the road and the brake lights of the car in front of him. The Toyota had room to go around it, he thought to himself, as he hit his brakes as hard as he could.

Gur, though, decided she had to stop. She eased into the brakes--with enough time to avoid hitting the crate in her path. Then she heard a noise that kept her awake at night for months.

For a second and a half the car was airborne. The haunting sound of metal on metal, a terrifying crunch followed by the eeriest silence Gur ever experienced.

Where were the children? Why couldn’t she hear them?

If they were gone, Gur thought, she would get out of the car and throw herself in front of traffic.

She turned around and saw her granddaughter staring wide-eyed.

“Haven’t we had an adventure, Hanna?” Gur asked, trying to keep calm.

Gur struggled out of the Toyota, which was leaking fuel. The rear of the car was flattened up against the back seat.

“You could have killed us all,” she told Whicker.

Whicker, who said he did his best to avoid the crash, was not cited in the accident.

But the veteran trucker wearily acknowledged that, as with many truck-versus-car collisions, the big rig looks like the bad guy.

“When there’s a truck and a car in the wreck, you’re going to blame the trucker,” Whicker said from a cell phone in his rig on the road in Utah--still doing the job he has had for 28 years.

Driving back from the doctor that afternoon, Helvia Sanchez was happy--the news about her leg was good. The Michoacan native sang along to Mexican love songs she tuned in on the radio.

It was almost 6:45 p.m. as she drove her van down California 192 toward Lindsay and home. Sanchez, 31, turned her head to the children in the back seat to tell them to put their seat belts on and to stop fighting.

Waiting at the stop sign, facing the opposite direction, farm worker Ramona Chavez could see the van approaching too quickly.

“Stop, stop, stop!” she remembers calling out.

Sanchez hit the brakes too late to stop. The van skidded into the intersection. A flatbed truck hauling crates of grapes was rolling through the intersection at the same moment.

The impact of the crash mangled the van, scattering a box of Froot Loops, tomatoes, lettuce--groceries for the week for the Sanchez family. Those who rushed to help found Sanchez and her 10-year-old, Diego, dead, crushed under the steering wheel. Paulina, 11, was clinging to life. Jose, 8, was unconscious and Michael, 4, whimpered in the back seat.

Driving somewhere near Sacramento, Jesus Sanchez had no idea what had just happened to his family. Around 11 p.m. he stopped at a pay phone in Tulare to call his wife. The trucker was running a day early. If he called ahead she could have sopes and enchiladas waiting when he got home. The phone rang and rang. No one answered.

He rushed all the way home. A Tulare County sheriff’s patrol car was sitting outside. His wife was dead. Nothing was said about his children. The deputy drove him to the hospital in Porterville. They had Polaroid photos for him to look at.

“You mean my son is dead too?” he asked.

They said yes.

Eleven days later Paulina died as well. Now he would have to find a way to make a new life for his two surviving sons.

One Day’s Toll: 139 Accidents

That night at 11:50 p.m. the day’s truck accidents came to a close in downtown Los Angeles. The driver of an 18-wheeler trying to exit the Santa Monica Freeway at Central Avenue was forced into a guardrail by another truck. The collision left a 20-foot scratch on the trailer.

One day, 139 accidents. Four deaths and the lives of many families altered forever.

In the year since, legal settlements have been reached and wrecked cars replaced. Survivors struggle to put their lives back together.

Also during the year, officials have talked about making the highways safer. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater vowed to cut in half the number of truck-related deaths in the next decade, but safety advocates question how such a goal will be achieved.

The Federal Highway Administration is working on the first changes in the 60-year-old rules regulating how many hours truckers can work--a proposal that should be unveiled within the next several months. Speeding and driver fatigue are the most common factors when truckers are found at fault in accidents.

Others are considering more extreme action. Legislation has been introduced in several states, including California, to ban big rigs from using certain small or narrow roads. A bill by Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) passed the Assembly Transportation Committee this year but has since stalled.

Officials in some regions, including Southern California, have proposed truck-only lanes and entrance ramps--the cost of which would be prohibitive.

Safety advocates, many of whom have lost loved ones in truck accidents, say changes are long overdue. They say the highest price when something goes wrong--no matter who is at fault--is almost always paid by those traveling in passenger vehicles.

And for many survivors, the loss is incalculable.

Jesus Sanchez has stopped driving a truck--the memories of what happened to his wife are too painful. He has taken a lower-paying job and struggles to rear his family without a woman’s touch. Insurance on the van has not come through. His dream house is for sale.

On Thursday he and his son took flowers to the site on the road where his wife and two other children died.

Galia Gur took four months’ disability from her job as an oncology nurse. Her back and neck still ache. Her hands are permanently disfigured from the stress she put on them gripping the steering wheel. She exits the freeway when she sees a truck, breaking into a cold sweat.

In the Coons’ bedroom, where Russ Coon has changed nothing in the last year, six framed photos of his wife are covered with smudge marks from his nightly kiss. In his dresser, he keeps the nightgown she wore the morning of her death--unable even to wash it.

“That’s all I have left now,” Coon says. “There is no reason that she had to die. I’ll never understand why that truck driver didn’t slow down.”

Times staff writers John M. Glionna, Jeff Gottlieb, Ray F. Herndon, Michael Luo and Ioana Patringenaru and Times researcher Tracy Thomas contributed to this report.

About This Series * Today: A day of truck accidents leaves a legacy of loss and pain one year later.

* Monday: Truckers contend with crowded highways, time pressures and reckless motorists.

* Tuesday: New technology could make trucks safer, but at a price.

This series will be available on The Times’ website at wwww.latimes.com/trucks

A Day of Truck Accidents

On a single day one year ago, 139 truck accidents took place on California freeways, highways and roads. Neither the busiest nor the slowest day of the year, Aug. 12, 1998, was punctuated an average of every 10 minutes by a truck crash -- most minor, several major, two deadly.

Killed in 6:43 p.m. Ducor accident:

Helvia Sanchez, 31, above, and her children Diego, 10, and Paulina, 11

Patricia Coon, 58, killed in 8:30 a.m. Buena Park accident.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Costs of a Crash

Value of property damaged, services required and payment made in Aug. 12 big-rig accident that killed Patricia Coon:

Vehicles/cargo

1996 Jeep Cherokee: $21,235

1989 trailer: $13,596

Tractor: $40,000

Cargo Loss: $35,000

1989 Buick: $1,800

1991 Honda: $6,000

*

Services

Funeral: $7,154

Ambulance: $450

Emergency room: $850

Long-term care: $5,000

*

Government

10 CHP officers at scene: $900

Tow truck costs: $920

Coroner: $1,700

Fire Dept. personnel: $1,328

Road damage: $300

*

Delays

Traffic delays for 42,000 motorists: $270,000*

Insurance settlements

Patricia Escobosa** and Patricia Coon: $900,000

Lisa Gerdes**: Case pending

*Figure derived by taking the average hourly vehicle count for the Artesia Freeway at Valley View St. and the four-hour duration of the Aug. 12 SigAlert. Also takes into account length of the traffic backup, based on radio reports. Dollar amount based on a “value of time” calculation created by UC Irvine researcher and updated to 1998 inflation levels.

**Victims in other cars

Total: $1,306,233

Source: California Highway Patrol’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System database

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times, PAUL DUGINSKI and RAOUL RANOA / Los Angeles Times