Sudden Michigan Whiteout Prompts Huge Pileup; 1 Dead

One person was killed and dozens of others were injured Thursday when a snow squall swept across Interstate 75 in northern Michigan, causing sudden whiteout conditions and a pileup of about 100 cars, authorities said.

Cars went flying into ditches, and some people bailed out and ran into the woods as other cars careened toward them.

“You could hear people screaming “Don’t get out of your car! You’ll get hit! Don’t get out of your cars!” said Morgan Cadene of Thunder Bay, Canada, whose Ford Explorer was totaled. “It just kept going--the crumpling of metal, time after time. It was sickening.”

The collisions lasted several minutes.

“There [were] whiteout conditions at that time. It was like somebody pulled a curtain down; you went from clear conditions to whiteout conditions just that quick,” said Dennis Long, Crawford County emergency management spokesman.

The accident happened about 180 miles northwest of Detroit in heavy New Year’s holiday traffic. At least 41 people were injured.

Elaine Lockitski of Oakland County said she and her husband managed to avoid hitting the vehicle in front of them, but they were struck from behind. For a moment, it “went silent. And then in the distance you could hear ‘bam, bam, bam.’ It was never-ending. . . . And then we started hearing all the sirens.”

City worker Bob Ahrns described the scene. “Cars are stacked up like sandwiches,” he said. “There’s a front-end loader and bulldozer trying to get the cars separated.”