At least five people died in a car accident that closed an icy Texas highway early Thursday morning, Fort Worth police said. THE The Fort Worth Fire Department said the pile-up left several people trapped in their cars.
Between 75 and 100 vehicles were involved in the deadly accident that happened around 6 am, Fort Worth police officer Daniel Segura said at a news conference. The scene stretched for about a kilometer on Interstate 35, said Segura.
About 36 people were transported from the area to hospitals in the region, Matt Zavadsky, a spokesman for the region’s ambulance service, told reporters. First aid was working to free anyone trapped in a vehicle, but some injured vehicles need to be removed first, said fire department spokesman Mike Drivdahl.
“We are working from front to back, back to front, ensuring that every driver, every person in every car is counted,” Drivdahl told reporters.
Video recording posted on Twitter by Jason McLaughlin, a storm chaser at CBS Dallas-Fort Worth, shows wrecked cars and trucks scattered across the highway with some vehicles on top of others.
“We are going to have to separate many of these vehicles with winches,” said Drivdahl. Subsequently, aerial images showed a crane lifting a truck and another vehicle from the accident site.
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According to CBS DFW, the police said that bad weather caused the pileup. The freezing rain and sleet that fell during the night left the roads slippery.
“Even for the first to respond here, walking is tricky,” said Zavadsky. An ambulance that responded to the pileup was hit by another vehicle in what Zavadsky called a minor accident that resulted in no injuries.
Buses were brought on the scene so that people who were not transported to hospitals would not get hypothermia. The National Weather Service predicted a 30-hour afternoon discharge at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
Authorities closed lanes to the north of the highway because of the pileup. A McLaughlin photo posted showed dozens of vehicles paralyzed immediately after the accident.
Zavadsky said he saw nothing like Thursday’s accident. “Frankly, for many of us, this is a career event,” he said. “You know, many of us have been in this profession for a long time. We trained for this type of scenario, but you never expect that to happen.”