At least six people were killed and 65 others hospitalized in a massive wreck on I-35 in Forth Worth, Texas, early Thursday. Three of the hospitalized people are in critical condition, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. In all, 133 cars, trucks, vans, and 18-wheelers collided in the express lane amid icy weather.
[ATTACH=full]349361[/ATTACH]
“The scene we saw today is one really unlike one probably any of us have ever seen and one we pray to God we never see again,” said Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes.
[ATTACH=full]349359[/ATTACH]
First responders had to use hydraulic tools to remove some people from their vehicles, and as they worked their way through the wreckage, medics marked the vehicles they searched to avoid duplicative efforts as they hurried to get people out of the sub-freezing temperatures. “I was looking in my rearview mirror and it was like watching the hand of God move these cars up around me in the ice,” a driver named Shane, who stopped just short of the pileup, told the Star-Telegram. When he got out of his car on the highway, he added, “it was literally like stepping on an ice rink.”
We will not breath for the next several months being told how 6 people died in a pile up in yunares states when our very own two car pileup killed 9 people in Nairobi-Nakuru road this morning. By today afternoon, we will have forgotten about ours and singing theirs.
Most accidents in Kenya are caused by careless driving, but if ice was present in the Texas case, it’s extremely dangerous. A thin transparent film of ice called “black ice” sometimes forms over tarmarc. It’s very hard to stop once you hit such a patch at speed, and crashing is almost unavoidable, simply because the road appears clear–you won’t know there is ice, till you feel a sudden drag on the steering wheel towards one side. You try to steer in the opposite direction, hit your brakes, the wheels lock, but the car keeps sliding on. You don’t want to be on such a road in that condition.
