ROCK COUNTY (WKOW) – Almost exactly one year ago, a massive pileup near Beloit left dozens hurt.
On Jan. 27, 2023, all lanes of I-39/90 were shut down after the crash.
One after another, cars smashed into each other.
Initial reports from that day show roughly 50 cars crashed, but an investigation shows more than quadruple that were involved.
27 News sat down with one of the first officials on scene to learn what exactly caused the crash.
Sgt. Craig Morehouse, of the Wisconsin State Patrol, still remembers arriving on scene.
Morehouse said they were first alerted to a pileup on the northbound side of the interstate. At that point, only 20 or 30 cars had crashed.
Not long after, the same thing happened on the southbound side.
“I could hear people crashing behind me,” Morehouse added. “A couple of other troopers and inspectors that ended up behind where my squad was said the same thing as they got out of their cars. They could just hear the boom, boom, boom of cars hitting each other.”
They quickly started checking cars and looking for anyone who was hurt.
“There were some cars there that I ran up on and was sure we were gonna have serious injuries and fatalities,” he recalled. “And then luckily, people had cuts and bruises and I think three or four broken bones was all we really had for serious injuries.”
One car is still stuck in his mind.
“It was caught between a big pickup truck and a semi and the entire vehicle had been hit on both sides, like squeezed in on itself,” Morehouse said.
He quickly ran over to help.
“I saw that vehicle and I was like, we have somebody dead … there is no way that people in that car aren’t dead or seriously injured,” he said.
When he got to the car, he realized no one was inside. Morehouse started looking around for the occupants and eventually a man waved him over.
“He opened the backseat of his car and there was three ladies sitting back there,” Morehouse said. “I’m like, ‘That was your car?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘You guys are okay?’ ‘Oh, yeah, we’re fine.'”
He said the women walked away without a scratch.
27 News was on scene that day and spoke with one couple who had their car hit.
The couple, Brandon and Jessie Stafford, had to climb a fence to escape the interstate after leaving their car.
“We smacked into the back side of him and then we got pushed off the side of the road. We got hit three or so more times. And it was just a chain reaction,” they told 27 News.
The couple was completely unharmed.
John Steiner with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation said the storm that day came out of nowhere.