Inside the massive I-35 crash that was like a scene from a disaster movie

Heath Hove is a state trooper and knows the drill on the roads in winter after 18 years in the saddle. But this. Man. “I barely saw it, it was snowing so hard.”

He was driving south on Interstate Highway 35 by Ames on Monday and saw lights ahead and traffic quickly slowing. Ten or 15 vehicles were in front of him and crashed like pinballs while 10 or 15 more cars came up behind him, all hell breaking loose. He managed to brake and pull off to the side of the highway.

That’s the moment when you look in your rear-view mirror and cringe at the barreling cars, trucks and buses slide toward you.

“I’ve never seen something escalate this fast. I knew it was out of control and there was nothing I could do to stop it,” he said.

Public and private officials on the scene that day, sent to help in one of Iowa’s most breathtaking crashes, provided a chilling account of the mayhem of an estimated 70 vehicles piling up like jalopies in a demolition derby. So much paperwork needs to be finished that officials won’t even know for at least a week the exact number of vehicles involved. There was one death and from “five to 10 serious injuries,” according to Sgt. Nathan Ludwig of the Iowa State Patrol.

Ludwig heard Hove, the first officer on the scene, loud and clear around 12:30 p.m. Monday. Cars were slamming into each other while travelling southbound just north of U.S. Highway 30.

“He was nearly screaming on the radio,” he said.

Hove left his vehicle, called for medics, and started to run from car to car, asking who needed help, even as the vehicles barreled like downhill skiers out of the driving snow, some Hove figures at more than 60 mph, right into the pile.

NEW STORM: Much more snow on the way | Tallying up Monday's snowfall

Many have seen the video footage of the crash by now, and are familiar with a semi that somehow shoots a gap in the pileup at high speed and manages to miss everyone. That fellow running from it is Hove.

“I’ve never seen the grille of a semi that close at 60 miles per hour,” he said. “My heart was beating hard for a quite a few beats. But there was so much going on you didn’t have time to think about it.”

Drivers sitting in their crumpled cars yelled out to him: “I’m cut but not hurt bad.” Others were simply walloped by air bags and wondering what to do. A Story County sheriff’s deputy arrived, and seven more followed not long after, one whose car was smashed into and totaled. The deputy was unhurt.

“The officers on the scene said it was like something out of a movie, echoes of crashes and people screaming,” said Lt. Leanna Ellis of the Story County Sheriff’s Office.

Hove was told there was a man in a bus, severely injured.

A bus window had popped out, and the driver was pinned by the steering column. Hove climbed through the window.

“I tried for 20 or 30 minutes to get him out,” he said. “I couldn’t.”

Three paramedics from Ames' Mary Greeley Medical Center, and others from Nevada's Story County Medical Center and Huxley began to arrive at the chaotic scene.

“The hardest part was physically getting to those that needed medical treatment. With the conditions the way they were and the number of cars that were involved, paramedics actually had to park the ambulance away from the scene and then carried supplies from the ambulance to those that had been injured,” said Beth Frandsen, Mary Greeley’s Mobile Intensive Care Services supervisor. “Because you had people still in their cars, as well as people outside of their cars, communication regarding which people actually needed medical treatment was a challenge.”

Paramedics soon began rescue breathing on the bus driver, Dave Easter of Independence, Missouri, but they didn’t have equipment to get him out.

For minutes, more traffic was still hurtling down the interstate toward the maelstrom. The Nevada Fire Department has a policy to park its trucks at a scene at an angle into the mess, shielding its workers who are rendering care to the injured so responders and wrecker drivers don’t get hit by traffic.

“Wrecker drivers have the highest fatality rate on the highway,” said Ray Reynolds, the department’s chief. “What bothers me is the inattentiveness of drivers. Flashing lights don’t even mean anything to people anymore.”

He said people involved in the crash faced a dilemma: Stick with advice to “stay with your vehicle” after a crash, or run for the hills. This case proved to be an exception, he said, as some people wisely ran up the ditch as far as the fence.

Luke Feld heard drivers ask the same question. Run?

“You don’t know what is coming up behind you,” said an Iowa Department of Transportation motor vehicle enforcement officer who was on the scene shortly after it happened.

The Iowa State Patrol had already dispatched two troopers to provide a “rolling roadblock,” essentially side-by-side escort at a slow speed up to the scene, so nobody gets the idea to zoom past.

RELATED: What to do if you're in a car crash during the winter?

It was also part of Feld’s job was to keep more vehicles from adding to the pile. One of the DOT's 400 statewide cameras, which supplied the video widely seen online, watched the footage live at the agency command center and told Feld what was going on and where to block off roads heading into the crash site.

That command post in Ankeny, the DOT’s Traffic Management Center, immediately had all employees on the horn contacting six officers and other DOT staff to tell them what was happening and where to erect message boards warning of an upcoming crash as far north as Hamilton County. They began social media blasts and public service announcements.

Bonnie Castillo, the center’s manager, said they executed a detailed plan. After the initial flurry of calls to emergency officials, one of the first decisions is whether to shut down the interstate. The southbound lanes were closed immediately; then, at 1:45 p.m. the northbound lanes were shut down.

“Northbound traffic was slowing to a stop after the crash, and EMS needed those lanes to get to the scene,” she said.

That brought other issues, such as designing detours and finding places for large tractor-trailer trucks to pull off and park. The center enlisted help from Jordan Creek Town Center and Prairie Meadows to provide parking there.

But what about all those people at the crash?

When Keith Morgan of Story County Emergency Management got to the scene, he was doing mental math. There were at least 70 vehicles with anywhere from one to four occupants. And then he saw the buses and thought, oh no, what if they are loaded with people?

“But they had just come from the Super Bowl and were empty,” he said.

That bullet dodged, he had to figure out a way to get people out of the snowbanks or in their cars. What about buses? He enlisted two from CyRide in Ames, and 37 people were loaded up to stay warm until a way could be cleared for them to exit and be taken to a temporary shelter or a rental car business.

The massive pileup had ceased but it was still a race against the clock: The longer the interstate is closed, the more potential for problems as people come up on roadblocks and traffic backs up for miles.

Why is my car shaking after the snowstorm?

Wreckers to the rescue.

“Nothing can prepare you for something that large,” said Tyler Mortvedt of Central Iowa Towing and Recovery in Ames.

He dispatched an army of trucks and began trying to find a way to untangle the mess. The problem was the sheer volume.

“We had to bring the rotator,” he said.

The rotator is a massive wrecker that can lift 50 tons — yes, enough for a semi — and spin it free of the area. One by one, they hauled in 60 vehicles to an impound lot, while other towing companies freed others.

“A majority of them were totaled,” he said.

What also came to his business that day was more unfortunate.

Easter, the bus driver, could not be freed from the seat. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Justin Rasmusson of the Rasmusson-Bacon Funeral Home in Nevada met the bus and tow truck at the towing company to take custody of Easter.

“When everyone else is home, we are out there,” Rasmusson said. “We are proud to provide this valuable service to the community.”

As the wreckage cleared, DOT snowplow drivers prepared the roadway to open by 6:15 p.m., nearly six hours after the wreck.

Scott Robinson had been clearing snow as the crashes unfolded, and his job was to make it safe so he didn’t have to see such a scene again. The bosses of many of the agencies, including his own, will gather for a debriefing in the coming week to discuss how their disaster-scene plans worked, but Robinson has a snowplow driver’s idea for the public.

“Tell people to drive the conditions,” he said. “They don’t give us much leeway out there. We have bumper stickers we give out, ‘Don’t crowd the plow.’ Apparently, no one reads them.

“When you see us out there operating, we are probably out there for a reason.”

Public and private responders out there that day all preached that message.

It’s Iowa. It’s winter. Slow down.

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