120-Plus Car Pileup Kills Four
Georgia State Patrol Shut Down Highway
RINGGOLD, Ga. -- About 125 vehicles piled up in a chain-reaction crash on a foggy northwest Georgia highway Thursday morning, killing four people.
Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said as of five hours after the accident, three bodies were still in mangled vehicles and one had been removed from the scene. Thirty-nine people were taken to four hospitals for injuries -- 15 of which were described as major.
Earlier Summers had reported five deaths the Georgia Department of Transportation reported ten.
A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation, Karlene Barron, said the accident happened around 7:50 a.m. on Interstate 75 five miles south of the Tennessee state line.
Authorities said visibility was near zero at the time of the wreck, which apparently started when two tractor-trailers in southbound lanes made contact. One of the trucks crossed the median and flipped over on its side, colliding with several northbound vehicles. Dozens of other vehicles then plowed into the pile.
All the fatalities were in the northbound lanes.
Thousands of commuters who live in northwest Georgia are usually headed north to Chattanooga, Tenn., at that time of day.
Summers said no charges would be filed.
The Georgia State Patrol closed the interstate in both directions and advised motorists to avoid the area.
The crash happened about 40 miles from the site of a deadly 1990 pileup near Calhoun, Tenn., that involved 99 vehicles and left 12 people dead.
That accident prompted Tennessee officials to install an elaborate fog detection and warning system on that fog-prone stretch of I-75 near the Hiwassee River.
linky
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Wow.....
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