A mud storm that lower visibility to close zero on Monday triggered a collection of chain-reaction crashes involving dozens of automobiles on an Illinois freeway, killing six individuals and injuring a minimum of two dozen others, state police and coroner’s officers stated.
Roughly 40 to 60 passenger vehicles and about 20 business automobiles, together with quite a few tractor-trailer rigs, had been concerned within the pileup round 11 a.m. CT (1200 ET) on Interstate 55 in southern Illinois, a state police official stated at a day press convention.
More than 30 individuals had been transported to space hospitals with accidents, and there have been “multiple fatalities,” the official stated. Two of the vehicles caught hearth because of the crash and it was doable that certainly one of them had exploded, he stated.
Joletta Hill, chief deputy for the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, later confirmed by phone that a minimum of six individuals had been confirmed lifeless from the accidents.
Local media posted video footage of the scene exhibiting smashed vehicles and vehicles crumpled in opposition to each other, a few of them on the shoulder of the freeway. The clip confirmed one truck burning amid a thick haze of mud and smoke.
The state police official stated the pileup close to the city of Farmersville, about 200 miles (320 km) southwest of Chicago, was attributable to “excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway, resulting in zero visibility.”
The 17-mile stretch of the freeway remained closed in each instructions a number of hours later, state police stated.
“My team and I are closely following the devastating crash on I-55 as authorities learn more. Please be safe as this situation continues to unfold,” US Representative Nikki Budzinski of Illinois stated on Twitter. — Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
