One crash area involved approximately 75 cars and several tractor-trailers in the eastbound lanes of the highway. The westbound lanes were closed to allow access by emergency vehicles.
According to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, 30 people were injured and transported to local hospitals. Doylestown Hospital confirmed it was treating one victim who was in stable condition, while Abington was reportedly treating 16 people. St. Mary’s Medical Center, in Langhorne, was treating seven and Temple University Hospital was treating one.
Dr. John Kelly, chief of staff at Abington, says the good news is none of the injuries are serious.
“The word that we have is that we may have seen the most severely injured at this point in time, which we’re pleased to say did not include any life-threatening injuries that we are aware of.”
Kelly explained what kind of injuries they were seeing,”In a blunt trauma situation, you’re going to have a lot of soft tissue and bone type injuries. I’m unaware of any fractures to date. We did have one patient who had a closed- head injruy but appears to be recovereing well from that.”
The incident began about 8:30am in the eastbound lanes between Willow Grove and the Route 1 exits in Bensalem, Pa.
Another crash happened closer to the Route 1 exit. That accident area involved approximately 30 cars and included a jackknifed tractor-trailer.
Chopper 3 was over the scene where it appeared at least four cars were stuck under the jackknifed tractor-trailer.
Major pile-up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Friday, February 14, 2014.
“I was able to get off to the shoulder,” said Terry Foley, who drives the route to work every day. “I didn’t hit the car in front of me. I said, ‘I survived,’ and then somebody comes flying in the back of me.”
CBS 3 traffic reporter Bob Kelly called this ”the worst accident I have seen in the 20 years I have been doing this.”
The Pa. Turnpike Commission reported around 3:30 p.m. that the tractor-trailer blocking all eastbound lanes was moved to allow trapped backlog to get past the scene in the left lane to continue eastbound on I-276. Disabled commercial vehicles remained, but all passenger vehicles in the backlog had been removed.
Other crews were removing small portions of the concrete median, to allow drivers trapped on the eastbound turnpike to U-turn onto the westbound lanes (which were also shut down to all but emergency vehicles) and get off the turnpike.
The turnpike was reopened to traffic just before 4pm — about 7½ hours after the first crash occurred.
One driver said that road spray on windshields plus the sun low in the sky may have hindered visibility as drivers found themselves suddenly upon a stopped vehicle ahead with insufficient room to stop on the slick pavement.
Terry Foley seemed to agree.
“It’s all ice,” Foley said.
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/02/14/approximately-100-cars-involved-in-crashes-on-pennsylvania-turnpike/
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