Six people have been killed after at least 72 vehicles were involved in massive pile-up crashes when a dust storm swept through central Illinois.
A key highway in the region was forced to close as the rare dust storm swept through nearby farms and onto a highway in a rural section of Illinois to cause “zero visibility” conditions, the Illinois State Police said.
At least 37 other people were injured in the crashes on a two-mile stretch of Interstate 55 in central Illinois.
The crashes occurred on both sides of the highway just before 11am on Monday (May 1), police said in a statement.
The highway, which was closed in both directions, reopened on Tuesday morning (May 2), the police said.
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The six deaths all occurred in the northbound lanes near Farmersville, south of Springfield and west of Indianapolis.
The crashes involved passenger cars and commercial vehicles, including two tractor-trailers that caught fire.
The people injured were aged between two and 80, and their injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening.
Authorities said it had been difficult to extract people from their vehicles because some were engulfed in flames.
The authorities were also struggling to identify two of the victims because of the extent of their injuries. One victim was driving a blue Chrysler 300 and the other a Hyundai.
“This is a difficult scene, something that is very hard to train for, something that we really haven’t experienced locally,” Kevin Schott, the director of Montgomery County’s emergency management agency, told reporters.
The Environmental Protection Agency was called on to manage the spillage from some of the diesel trucks.
The dust storm reportedly came on rapidly, creating conditions similar to a snowstorm whiteout in which visibility is greatly reduced.
