A highway pileup involving 100 vehicles, including big rigs, grinded an Oregon highway to a destructive halt during a nasty whiteout snowstorm Thursday, according to authorities.
The series of crashes caused a SUV fire and closed a part of Interstate-84 where numerous drivers and passengers were trapped in their vehicles late morning, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said.
Photos posted online by law enforcement showed the SUV burned from top to bottom, though every occupant fled to safety.
First responders also went car-to-car looking for victims in need. While some injuries were reported, it’s unclear how many people were hurt as of Thursday afternoon.
“Most of the reported crashes are non-injury or minor injury,” an Oregon state police spokesperson said, according to KATU. “There are no known fatal injuries or even serious injuries at this time.”
A couple caught in the pileup said they couldn’t avoid the wreckage.
“The visibility was so low by the time we got to the stopped traffic,” one of the travelers told KATU.
“We tried to stop; we ended up smashing into a semi-truck and another passenger truck and got stuck there for a minute.
“We heard somewhere crashes behind us, so we decided to go ahead and go ahead and go through, in between the semi-truck and the median.”
The conditions were so treacherous the Oregon Department of Transportation closed the highway in both directions between La Grande and Baker City – a stretch of roughly 50 miles between the two cities.
“Closures are due to blowing and drifting snow with visibility less than 500 feet,” the state DOT wrote before later reopening that section.
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