Bridges glassy, stretch of I-540 sees 40 crashes
Posted on Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Strangers found themselves helping one another late Sunday and early Monday as Interstate 540 ’s ice-slickened bridges led to at least 40 accidents in Benton and Washington counties.
The accidents — with cars spinning down the highway, pickups tumbling down hillsides and a thoroughbred horse named Johnny G running loose after escaping his smashed trailer — resulted in four minor injuries, said Steve Harrison, assistant chief of Central Emergency Medical Service.
“We were lucky,” Harrison said.
The spate of winter on Sunday and Monday was short-lived, said National Weather Service meteorologist Max Blood. A north wind and temperatures just below freezing Sunday night in Northwest Arkansas caused bridges to ice up, Blood said.
The weather service predicts south winds and temperatures in the upper 50 s today. There’s a chance of rain Wednesday with temperatures in the lower 50 s, the weather service predicts.
That will lead off what is expected to be a wetter- and warmer-than-normal winter season in Northwest Arkansas, the service’s Climate Prediction Center said. It was chilly and wet late Sunday and early Monday when drivers involved in mishaps relied on the kindness of strangers to help make it through the night. Among the helpful strangers was Hill Brothers Transportation trucker Rick Johnson, who lives in Tucson, Ariz. Carrying a load of pasta to Russellville, Johnson pulled over on I-540 to let three people involved in two wrecks sit in his truck’s cab
1 for 1 / 2 hours as they waited for help. “All I did was help them stay warm,” Johnson said.
Laurence Binder of Navasota, Texas, said he never caught the name of the 22-year-old Arkansas physical science teacher who sat in his vehicle waiting for help to arrive.
Binder watched the woman’s car spin around three times on I-540 before it plunged down a hill about 4: 30 p. m. Sunday and into a fence south of Greenland.
“I absolutely am wondering how she is today,” said Binder, who arrived about 3: 45 a. m. at his Texas alpaca ranch after the third annual Alpacas of the Ozarks Halter and Fleece Show in Fayetteville. “She was in shock, but she seemed to be OK.”
About the time Binder ar- rived home in Texas with his five alpacas, Frank Hamner found himself chasing Johnny G up and down the median on I-540.
Hamner was hauling his thoroughbred horse from Ohio to his home in Heavener, Okla., after months of barrel-race training. Hamner lost control of his pickup just before 3: 15 a. m. Monday on a bridge between Greenland and West Fork.
“My pickup went sideways, and it threw the horse out,” Hamner said. “I assumed it was dead.”
Hardly.
Johnny G was fired up. He dashed a mile up the highway toward the West Fork exit, then headed north again with Hamner, Arkansas State Police Cpl. James Baker and a Washington County sheriff’s office deputy chasing him.
“I’ll have to give those Arkansas people credit,” Hamner said. “They did a lot of good for me, but trying to catch a horse at 3 o’clock in the morning that’s running up and down the interstate, that’s pretty good.”
Johnny G was back in the trailer, and Hamner was back on the road by 4 a. m.
Hours earlier, the traffic slowed to 10 mph or less for miles on I-540 in south Washington County, said Deborah Johnson, a J. B. Hunt Transport Services employee who lives in Fayetteville. The three-hour trip home from visiting family in Little Rock took closer to four hours Sunday night. She was home by 8: 30 p. m.
“I was not going fast,” Johnson said. “It was 10 mph for 30 or 40 minutes. I’d never seen that many accidents all at once.”
While the majority of the crashes were on the stretch of I-540 in Washington County, 13 wrecks were in the Benton County portion of I-540, said Capt. Lance King of the Arkansas State Police.
Darla Muse of Bentonville was northbound on I-540 with her family near the Arkansas 102 exit around 8: 50 p. m. when she saw a driver leave the highway.
Her husband stopped their vehicle and went to help the woman and her young daughter who’d left the roadway. No one was injured, Muse said.
“Then everyone we saw was crawling to the next exit really slow,” she said. “That’s how it is after you see something like that.”
Thale Keisling, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department’s district maintenance engineer at Fort Smith, said the department responded to icy bridges quickly with a salt and sand mixture intended to give cars traction on the road. Some bridges were treated with calcium chloride.
“This one from the forecast didn’t appear to have the potential for what occurred,” Keisling said. “It changed in a hurry.”
There were far fewer weather-related driving issues away from I-540, largely because city streets have few overpasses and bridges.
Fayetteville police, however, assisted the Arkansas State Police and a city police officer was involved in one of the wrecks.
Officer Steven Pense parked his car along the Fulbright Expressway near Gregg Avenue at 6: 54 p. m. Sunday to check on three separate accidents when his car was struck from behind. Pense was not in the car at the time, said Fayetteville police spokesman Bill Phelan. No one in the oncoming vehicle was injured, and no citations were issued. Information for this article was contributed by Adam Wallworth of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
