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Witnesses Describe 'Metal Flying' in 70-Vehicle Pile-Up

Kevin Bennett
/
Freelance
A tractor-trailer and SUV among 70 vehicles involved in a pileup Wednesday.

ETNA, Maine — Traffic is moving again on Interstate 95 northbound after this morning's multi-vehicle pile up, which authorities now say involved 70 vehicles.  Fifty vehicles had to be towed, authorities say.State police spokesman Stephen McCausland says at least 17 people were injured, including at least two who were considered seriously injured. He says the chain reaction involving 70 vehicles occurred during a blinding snowstorm that caught drivers by surprise.

"We just saw brake lights coming on and it was just cars hitting cars," says Steve Dupuis of Plymouth, who witnessed the scene unfold.

Lori Welch of Newport was a passenger in a car driven by her husband. She says all of a sudden the interstate was like a track of bumper cars.

"And he's like, 'Oh my God! Oh my God!'" Welch says. "And we could see tractor-trailer trucks and there's just metal flying and vehicles up on end. Everything was just crashing and crashing and crashing."

Among the vehicles caught in the pile of wreckage was a car that got trapped underneath a school bus. Dupuis says he helped rescue the driver.

Credit Kevin Bennett / Freelance
/
Freelance
A vehicle among the 70 involved in a pileup Wednesday.

"I cut his seatbelt off with a pocketknife and I gave him my gloves so he wouldn't cut himself on anything and we just snuck him through his driver's window, We just eked him out," he says. "And he was all right. He walked away."

Three students were on the school bus but they were not injured. Detective Larry Morrill of the Bangor Police Department was among the drivers who slid into a utility trailer. He was uninjured and helped out state police, who arrived quickly. He says in 20 years he's never seen anything like this.

"It was bad," Morrill says. "I don't even know how to describe it. We were just trying to tend - everybody was trying to check cars and tend to injured and see who was trapped and who we needed to get out first."

By 10 a.m., Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor had received 11 patients from the crash site. Both northbound lanes on a 30-mile section of the interstate were closed for several hours.