Seven people died and 25 others were treated after fog and smoke caused a massive vehicle pileup on a Louisiana interstate on Monday, authorities said.
Authorities said the initial crash was caused by poor visibility from a “super fog,” when smoke from local wetlands combined with dense fog, according to NOLA.com.
In a statement, Louisiana State Police said the fiery crashes on Interstate 55 involved 158 vehicles, NOLA.com reported. Police added that the injuries ranged from minor to critical, according to the news outlet.
A series of crashes on the interstate occurred just before 9 a.m. CDT near the Manchac exit of I-55, NOLA.com reported. The pileup caused backups in both directions on the interstate, and the lack of visibility caused portions of Interstate 10 and the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway to be closed, according to The Associated Press.
“As we saw earlier this morning, there was a tanker truck ... part of the tanker truck caught fire,” Kate Stegall, a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police, said during a news conference. “That tanker truck was carrying a hazardous material that is currently being offloaded.”
Stegall said there was a possibility that the death toll could rise, WWL-TV reported.
“We’re seeing fatalities. We’re seeing a lot of people that are hurt,” Clarecia Readus told WDSU-TV. “We see some people that are just shaken up.”
St. Johns Parish Sheriff Mike Tregre told WVUE-TV that there were 25 crashes in three different spots along the northbound and southbound lanes of I-55. Three 18-wheelers were involved and at least two were fully engulfed in flames, the sheriff said.
Clarencia Patterson Reed told NOLA.com that she was driving to Manchac with her wife and niece in the car when she saw people attempting to get her to stop. She stopped her vehicle but was struck from behind and the side by two other vehicles.
“It was ‘Boom. Boom.’ All you kept hearing was crashing for at least 30 minutes,” Reed told NOLA.com. Reed said that she and her wife suffered injuries to her leg and side.
“We were looking for fire extinguishers, and we just all kind of pulled together,” Mary McLin told WDSU. “We were checking on each other, seeing if everybody was OK.”
The super fog is expected to affect the area for the next few days, authorities said.