Monday, May 1 was not easy for the police on this Illinois highway. A huge pile-up of cars took place on a stretch of the highway involving around 100 vehicles, including smoking tractor-trailers. The cause of this disaster worthy of the car stunts of Hollywood action films, a dust storm, as reported by Paris Match the day after the incident. “About 30 commercial vehicles and 40 to 60 cars are involved. This includes two semi-trailer trucks that caught fire due to the crashes,” police said.
The human toll is heavy. Police said a total of 30 people have been taken to hospital. The severity of their injuries ranges from mild to severe. The vital diagnosis of some of them is engaged, specifies the article of the media. We also learn that the age of the injured varies from 2 to 80 years. This huge pileup of cars that collided one after the other caused the death of 6 people, according to the Illinois police report.
3 kilometers of traffic jam in a thick cloud of dust
The highway linking Saint-Louis (Missouri) and Chicago (Illinois) was blocked by stationary vehicles for about 3 kilometers on both sides of the road. The videos of the local press show the distressing images of a highway plunged into a thick cloud of dust where the wind is still blowing and where visibility is almost zero. We can see the head of a light vehicle stuck behind a large truck. Many cars ended up on the roadside, in the grass. This type of deadly dust storm is not an isolated case. Eight people have already lost their lives in the same type of apocalyptic pileup in Utah in July 2021, recalls the Paris Match.
A dust storm passes over a highway, the aftermath is chaos and devastation © Unsplash
