Six people were killed in a massive pileup involving more than 100 vehicles on a Missouri highway on Thursday morning, authorities said.
The fatal chain reaction crash on Interstate 57 near Charleston unfolded after a driver braked due to fog in the area, officials told KFVS.
First responders from Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky rushed to the scene of the ‘highly fatality motor vehicle collision’ involving ‘more than 135 vehicles’, the Scott City Fire Department wrote on Facebook.
“When we got the call around 8 a.m., and as we approached the freeway, there was very thick fog,” Charleston Department of Public Safety Director Robert Hearnes reportedly said.
“You couldn’t… the visibility was less than 50 feet. And so the traffic had already slowed down, but we had multiple, multiple crashes on both sides of the highway.
A mobile morgue had been set up at a Charleston funeral home, Mississippi County Coroner Terry Parker told the local station as he confirmed a sixth death.
Other injured were treated at the scene and at local hospitals, including several first responders, Parker reportedly said.
“Only in one of the worst war movies, or a fire in Chicago or St. Louis, something we might see on the news in a big city, but nothing of that nature in our area,” a- he told the station. .
The names of the victims have not yet been released because not all of their families have been notified, authorities said.
New York Post
