ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Foggy driving conditions along the Glenn Highway on Thursday morning contributed to a massive pileup that closed the busy roadway for several hours.
Alaska State Troopers wrote in a dispatch they were notified around 10:30 a.m. of a collision in the southbound lanes of the Glenn Highway at mile 30 on the Knik River bridge. All told, 37 vehicles were involved in the collision near Reflections Lake near the bridge.
According to Ken Barkley with the Mat-Su Department of Emergency Services, thirteen people were taken to a local hospital with injuries but he was not aware of any serious injuries.
Further investigation into the pileup concluded dense fog that limited visibility to one-car length caused a “chain reaction of rear-end collisions,” according to troopers. The pileup followed a crash between an out-of-control driver whose car spun out on the icy bridge while trying to avoid a rear-end collision. The spinning car then slammed into another vehicle in the same southbound lane. Those two vehicles were in turn hit by about a dozen vehicles, which started the succession of rear-end collisions.
Both lanes of the Glenn Highway were closed at the Glenn and Parks Highway interchange, with traffic being rerouted through Palmer on the Old Glenn Highway. Troopers initially said that the southbound lane was the only road closed, but later said both directions were shut down as the mess was cleared. Troopers said the northbound lane was reopened just past 1 p.m. and the southbound reopened around 2:15 p.m.
Also known as the “James L. Bondsteel Bridge of Honor,” the bridge crosses the Knik River on the southern limits of the Palmer Hayflats. Reflections Lake sits on the western side of the highway.
Video taken by a motorist involved in the crash shows numerous cars and trucks stopped on the road with varying levels of damage. Additional sounds of crashing can be heard in the distance as more vehicles pile in.
The video taken by Scott Herbert also shows the foggy conditions that motorists encountered as they made their way along the Palmer Hayflats towards Eagle River and Anchorage. Herbert said he couldn’t see much farther than 30 or 40 feet in front of him when he encountered the crash.
“All of a sudden, I saw two or three different brake lights, and I thought, oh man, so I slowed down as best I could, but we were right on top of it,” Herbert said. “If I knew and I could see by the road in the way — and just knowing the roads, that it was really, really, icy right there in the middle — and I saw a couple other people slide and smashing the cars right in front of me.
“[Another car] was trying to brake, sliding in the road, smashed the other cars that were right there in the road, and then another car came and smashed that one and then another car stopped and tried to do the same thing, but they hit the barrier behind me and kind of turned sideways, which they stopped, but then other people smashed in. So I was lucky.”
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