I was sleeping good early Sunday morning, February 10th, 2019, had actually gone to bed early thinking I might need all the rest I could possibly get, since the forecast was for snow and possibly ice on the 10th…at 5:30 am the scanner started going nuts…St Clair Fire Department was dispatched to multiple vehicle accidents, most of them involving semi`s and some with drivers trapped inside their cabs….Sullivan Fire Department Pumper 854 was dispatched to assist St Clair with semi`s involved near the Rest Area, which is located at the 235 mile marker….soon after, from listening to radio traffic, St Clair ran out of ambulances and other departments to the east began sending some by mutual aid…not long after that, those departments started receiving multiple mva`s in their districts, one department was Boles Fire District in the Villa Ridge and Gray Summit areas.
Not long after 854 responded to assist St Clair, Sullivan Fire Department and EMS were dispatched to a report of a semi overturned EB I-44 at the 225 mile marker, possibly in front of Orschelin`s Store. As soon as I was dressed and after putting a couple of buckets of rocks in the bed of my truck, I headed in that direction…slowly…while my street Elmont Road, was in good shape thanks to our City Street Department working overnight, Fisher Street, a side street, was not..it was a sheet of ice, so I really had to creep down it. The South Service Road was a little better and I pulled into the parking lot by Subway and turned around, spotting Sullivan PD Sgt Rohrer in the suv parked on the Service Road by the Eastbound lanes of 44, next to a jack-knifed semi, the cab in the median and the trailer sticking out across both lanes of EB 44, totally blocking them…traffic was backed up west of the west overpass already….
…on my way to that one, Fire and EMS were dispatched to a report of several semi`s overturned at the 225.8 mile marker, the east side of the East Overpass….so far Chief Eric was the only one on the scene from the Fire Department and it was sometime before other firefighters were able to arrive, EMS was on scene and going semi to semi checking for injuries, climbing up on the semi`s to check on them.
I drove on down the Service Road and then turned left to go across the East Overpass…another Sullivan PD Officer had the top of the entrance ramp to EB I-44 blocked for Emergency Vehicles only, so I pulled over just past him and got out to take these photos….
There were two semi`s overturned just past the city limit sign for Oak Grove Village, one overturned in the median, driver`s side down into the grass, another one on the right side was eastbound and then slid around in a complete 180 and flipped over on the driver`s side, coming to a stop in the grassy area between the eastbound lanes and entrance ramp to eastbound lanes, now facing west. In front of the overturned semi in the median, were three semi`s that simply slid off into the median, two were side by side facing east, the far forward semi cab was in the median while the trailer stuck out into eastbound lanes, causing some blockage.
Further east half a mile was another semi overturned off to the right of eastbound lanes halfway down the hill and another one the trailer slid off into the median with the cab remaining out in the eastbound lanes….
Here is Chuck`s Towing personnel removing the first semi that slid off into the median at the 225 mile marker of eastbound I-44…
…the wrecker drivers shown were the only ones that were able to make it to work, so once they had this driver back up on the road, they moved east to work on getting the other trucks out of the way. Shortly after he pulled the semi in front of the Orschelin store, a car and a pickup truck collided with another semi a little further east, at the start of the exit ramp from EB I-44 to the East Overpass….
It was around 10 am when Pumper 854 and their crew returned to the District from assisting St Clair, long morning I am sure down there as well.