Chain-Reaction Pileup Clogs I-15, Injures 24

RANCHO CUCAMONGA — A CHP cruiser, stopped in traffic lanes as an officer placed flares at a suspected drunk-driving accident, was rear-ended by another car, setting off a chain-reaction pileup under a blanket of fog on Interstate 15 Sunday morning, authorities said.

Ultimately, 30 cars and a tractor-trailer rig smashed into one another, injuring 24 people, four of them critically. The interstate, the main link to the High Desert and Las Vegas, was closed southbound from just after 8 a.m. until 6:15 p.m., clogging traffic for miles on the heavily traveled highway, CHP officers said.

The closure stretched from the I-15 junction with the I-215 south to Highland Avenue. Drivers were diverted onto the smaller I-215, but normally heavy weekend traffic combined with the crowd leaving an air show at Edwards Air Force Base to create “a traffic nightmare,” said CHP Officer Christy Caddel.

Glass and metal flew through the air as people scrambled out of their wrecked vehicles and onto the freeway median and shoulder. One pickup truck’s cargo of boulders “came flying out of the cab like bowling balls” as the smaller truck hit the tractor-trailer, said the big rig’s driver, Danny Froschauer.

“We were running for our lives,” said Eddie Gomez, 23, of Rialto. “All these other cars kept coming and crashing at high speed and debris was flying all over the place. There were cars on top of each other. You couldn’t see it but you could hear skidding and bang, bang.’ ”

That no one was killed in the accident was credited to air bags and the use of seat belts, Caddel said.

Gomez was heading home from Las Vegas with his family, as were most of the 75 to 80 people involved in the accident. His sister was hospitalized with lacerations and his car was totaled. Gomez described the roadway as like “a blanket of fog.”

When the fog lifted, almost all vehicles were jammed into a 100-yard stretch of the four-lane highway, looking like the aftermath of a demolition derby, Caddel said.

“It was just total chaos,” she said. “Some vehicles rear-ended other vehicles and were rear-ended themselves and then they were hit from both sides. Some were barely involved.”

Caddel said the chain-reaction began at about 8 a.m. with a three-car pileup that was apparently triggered by a suspected drunk driver, who was arrested at the scene and held by San Bernardino sheriff’s officers.

CHP Officer Bill Jones turned on his flashers and parked his cruiser 100 yards behind the accident and began to lay out flares.

Before he could set off the flares, though, a sedan rear-ended the CHP car, Caddel said. Jones was not injured, but within seconds “everybody behind him started slamming on his brakes, but it was too late.”

Drivers said that I-15 had been foggy farther north and they had slowed for it. But they speeded up when they hit a clear patch, and by the time they reached the wall of fog, it was too late to stop.

“The visibility was 50 to 70 feet is all, and the speeds were to 50 to 65 miles an hour,” Caddel said. “It’s going to take 300 feet to stop at 50 miles an hour, so when you only have 50 feet visibility, and you’re following too close, there’s just not time to react.”

Some of the injured were taken to hospitals by passersby and tow trucks. Those who did not need hospitalization were ferried to Etiwanda High School aboard a San Bernardino County sheriff’s bus. The condition of the most critically injured had stabilized by late afternoon, Caddel said.

Investigators praised truck driver Froschauer, 49, of Hesperia, who steered his big rig onto the shoulder after it was struck; approaching cars could see that something was wrong when they spotted the Yellow Freight truck.

“The sight of that jackknifed big-rig with the lights on was enough to make some of them slow down and that made a big difference,” said one CHP officer.

“That was excellent driving,” the officer told Froschauer.

Froschauer was heading from Barstow to Fontana when he spotted the accident. “The fog was pretty heavy a mile or two down the road. Then it went up, then it got heavy again.”

He spotted the smashup, and “I swerved to the right to miss them. As I was stopping, they were all running into the back of each other.”

A pickup full of boulders hit his truck. “The driver in the pickup was pinned inside by the rocks (which) came flying out of the cab like bowling balls and hit a couple of other people,” Froschauer said.

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall and Patt Morrison contributed to this story.