On Tuesday, May 14 around 3:00 p.m. there was an accident involving an overturned 18-wheeler on I-20 which spilled its cargo all across the interstate. The accident occurred approximately three miles West of Forest Exit 88 near the Blossom Hill Road overpass and caused a traffic jam that extended east for miles.
The driver of the overturned 18-wheeler sustained injuries that required him to be taken to a local hospital but were not life threatening. As crews worked to clean up the crash site and law enforcement worked to safely direct traffic around the wreckage no one was expecting what was about to happen just five miles East on I-20.
At about 4:45 p.m., as a result of the westbound lanes being at a standstill because of the wreckage ahead, a fatal secondary crash happened involving one passenger vehicle and two 18-wheelers. The car was engulfed in flames and the driver of the passenger vehicle died at the scene.
According to reports, as the drivers of the two long haul trucks and the passenger vehicle approached the idle traffic on I-20 the vehicle was traveling between the two tractor trailers. MHP Sergeant Andy West said it appeared that the diesel in front and the car behind it were attempting to slow down, but the truck that was following both vehicles did not slow down fast enough and collided with the rear of the vehicle forcing it under the trailer of the leading truck.
The car was crushed between the two semis at which time it caught on fire. The driver of the car was pronounced dead at the scene and the drivers of both trucks were taken to local area hospitals to be treated for their injuries which were non-life threatening.
Sergeant West said that the body of the deceased driver was so severely burned that it was transported to the medical examiner’s office to undergo DNA testing so that positive identification could be properly made.
In all likelihood, the first accident would have been cleared up and traffic on I-20 West could have begun flowing within a couple of hours of the accident happening, but due to the severity and aftermath of the second accident it caused I-20 West to be closed and all traffic was diverted off the interstate and on to Highway 80 West at Exit 100 in Lake and was directed through Lake, Forest and Morton to Highway 13 at a snail’s pace. Traffic was allowed to reenter I-20 for westbound travel at Exit 77 in Morton.
Due to the high-volume bumper to bumper traffic traveling from Lake to Morton every intersection along that route was overly congested. To make traffic matters even worse the timing of the second accident coincided with local area citizens getting off from work which led to areas roads and intersections being densely congested throughout the early evening and on into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Traffic on Highway 80 was extremely slow going in both directions and attempting to cross Highway 80 at any intersection was nearly impossible to navigate.
Law enforcement officers from Lake, Forest, Sebastopol, Morton and other neighboring municipalities assisted the Scott County Sheriff’s Department with directing the massive amounts of traffic at all the intersections between Lake and Morton. Later in the evening law enforcement and local officials made the decision to turn off all traffic control signal lights and reverted to directing traffic by hand at all intersections in the attempt to have the traffic flow more smoothly.
Some of the remnants of the fatal crash could still be seen when traveling Highway 35 South of Forest as one of the trucks involved in the fatal crash was still smoldering and black smoke was still floating to the sky offering a grim reminder of the tragic events that unfolded the previous day.
