6 Crashes Put Kink in Traffic on 101 Freeway

Half a dozen traffic collisions in less than an hour shut down a section of the Ventura Freeway on Wednesday morning, caused backups from Oxnard to Thousand Oaks and stretched the California Highway Patrol’s response times to the limit.

The collisions occurred between 11 a.m. and noon and spanned a 20-mile section of the Ventura Freeway, forcing CHP officers and county fire crews into gridlock as they inched toward the accident sites, officials said.

On the increasingly clogged Ventura Freeway, days like Wednesday give drivers a glimpse of Ventura County’s future, said CHP Officer Dave Webb.

“There aren’t any slow days in Ventura,” Webb said. “It was an extreme case, but it wasn’t unusual.”

Two collisions were triggered by overturned vehicles, one involved a tanker filled with fuel, another occurred when cars swerved to avoid two dogs that strolled through freeway traffic near Oxnard, and others resulted from motorists’ slowing to watch rescue crews work, Webb said.

The accidents also taxed the CHP’s dispatchers, who frantically tried to move officers, tow trucks and county Fire Department crews from one accident to another.

“It was just a chain reaction,” said Jeff Johnson of Eddie’s Towing in Newbury Park. “You get an accident happening and everybody slowing down to look, traffic backs up, and if someone is not paying attention we get called to clean up the roadway.”

Drivers from the company responded to two accidents on the Ventura Freeway in Newbury Park, Johnson said. Those occurred less than a mile apart at about the same time, he said.

Webb said the first call came in just after 11, when a Toyota Corolla collided with a tanker truck loaded with gasoline near the northbound Wendy Drive offramp. The driver of the Toyota, Melody Ogden, 41, of Thousand Oaks, was treated at Los Robles Regional Medical Center for minor injuries, Webb said.

As traffic slowed less than a mile from the crash, four cars collided, sending one off the freeway, where it flipped and caught fire. The driver, John Pictaggi, 17, of Northridge, suffered minor injuries. Those two crashes closed the northbound side of the freeway for an hour, Webb said.

For a July day with dry roads and good visibility, it was an exceptionally busy morning, Webb said.

Each month, local CHP officers respond to about 350 crashes--mostly on the Ventura Freeway between La Conchita and Westlake, Webb said. The Ventura office is staffed with 12 to 15 officers each day, he said.

Firefighters who found themselves stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to accidents Wednesday said they weren’t surprised.

“We always get a lot of accidents out there. It’s like that almost every day,” said Capt. Robert Towers of Ventura County Fire Department Station 51 in El Rio. “People are in a hurry, driving a little carelessly and switching lanes.”