140 car pile up on I-10 Jefferson County (Houston, Beaumont: home, live)

[CptnRn]

There are varying reports, 100-140 cars, 1-2 dead, 50-80 injured

2 dead, 51 hospitalized in pile-up on I-10 near Beaumont, Texas - UPI.com

The two dead were in the same car in an eastbound lane of Interstate 10, which the Texas Department of Safety said was closed in both directions for several hours after the chain-reaction pile-up, which began about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

Hundreds of vehicles were stuck in traffic at the scene and police were urging drivers to find alternate routes to their destinations.

The crashes -- which involved an undetermined number of 18-wheelers and at least one tanker -- occurred in the vicinity of Mile Marker 835 on the east-west highway, KBMT-TV, Beaumont, reported. Westbound lanes of I-10 were opened at 12:38 p.m., but police said eastbound lanes would remain closed for at least 8 to 10 hours, the Beaumont Enterprise reported.

[dorpus]

Terrible tragedy. I'm flying home next week, because we agreed in advance to avoid the holiday rush and get more affordable tickets.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by dorpus

Terrible tragedy. I'm flying home next week, because we agreed in advance to avoid the holiday rush and get more affordable tickets.

Good decision. I hate holiday driving where everyone backs up bumper to bumper, regardless of how bad the fog or blizzard is. Even when you allow plenty of room between you and the guy in front of you, there is still some jerk riding your rear bumper.

[Austinite101]

The article I read said 150 vehicles. I hope its wrong.

[DejaBlue]

100-150 vehicles. Close enough.

Sure are a lot of 18 wheelers in that pileup. 59, I-10 and 290 18 wheelers go 100. No joke. It's terrible all around but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened because of one of those FedEx trucks and everyone else just couldn't slow down fast enough.

[DanielWayne]

That scared the crap out of me when I saw it on the news. We go that way to visit my family in the Golden Triangle. This year, we stayed in town, and instead we are visiting my family over the weekend. Glad we didn't decide to go that way on Thanksgiving day or we would have been stuck on the road. I truly feel for those who were affected by this accident because that had to be incredibly frightening.

I agree with the above posts about how this possibly may have been caused by some jackhole driver. This is one of those things that infuriates me. My experience is 95% of the people slow down in bad fog or heavy rain. But there is always at least one impatient clown that makes a poor decision to continue with the posted speed limit when you have less than 10 ft visibility. Just one person who thinks it is more important to shave 5 minutes off his/her drive instead of exercising some prudent caution - that's all it takes. Like I read in a forum post earlier - it's better to arrive late than to not arrive at all. Please slow down people!

[TX75007]

There were several crash scenes.

The real story of the disaster is that the uninjured drivers pulled a lot of injured people from the wrecks OR worked on saving lives while people were trapped. I am told by an EMT friend in Houston that several people lost a lot of blood and were trapped in their cars and others kept pressure on their wounds for several hours and this saved their lives. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

[diablo234]

When I drove from Louisiana to Houston on Thanksgiving I actually passed by the accident scene sometime around 1:00pm, and the eastbound lanes of I-10 were still shut down and there was still wrecked vehicles and debris on the roadway. So far I think I counted six trucks that were smashed up and two cars that were totalled.

Originally Posted by DejaBlue

Sure are a lot of 18 wheelers in that pileup. 59, I-10 and 290 18 wheelers go 100. No joke. It's terrible all around but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened because of one of those FedEx trucks and everyone else just couldn't slow down fast enough.

Actually there was one FedEx truck that was pretty smashed up as well.

[DaynaKH]

My brother drove through this. He sent me photos. He was right behind the masses of wrecks, close enough to send me n image of one of them. It was absolutely terrible. He left Lumberton at 8:00 am, and didn't get to our parent's home (3 hours south/west) until 2:30 pm. His wife and him spent hours at a complete standstill. My SIL was telling me one guy, sure to miss Thanksgiving dinner with their family, was passing out cake balls to various people waiting.

I have to tell you, when he said it was around 100-150 cars we didn't believe him.

[DaynaKH]

Here is the photo he sent me Thursday morning.