A sudden chain-reaction crash involving nearly 60 vehicles shut down both directions of California’s Highway 99 on Saturday morning after dense fog reduced visibility to near zero and triggered one of the region’s worst pileups in years.
The crash happened just after 8:15 a.m. near the small farming community of Earlimart in Tulare County, about 40 miles north of Bakersfield, where drivers encountered the fog and caused crashes on both the northbound and southbound lanes.
Within moments, the state route known as the Golden State highway became a twisted mass of crushed sedans, jackknifed semi trucks, and debris scattered across multiple lanes.
California Highway Patrol (CHP) confirmed that 59 vehicles were involved.
At least 10 people were taken to local hospitals for treatment, nine of them with minor injuries, according to CHP.
Dozens of others were stranded for hours as emergency crews worked through the wreckage, according to news outlets. The highway reopened Saturday evening.
CHP officers said visibility at the time of the crash was as low as 100 to 200 feet, leaving drivers effectively blind as they drove on one of the busiest freight and commuter corridors in the state’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.
The Central Valley as a reputation for fog-related pileups, with Saturday’s disaster the latest in a growing list, some of them involving fatalities.
Six days earlier, nine people were hospitalized after thick fog caused a 43-car crash on Highway 58 outside Bakersfield.
On January 11, dense fog triggered another chain reaction crash on Highway 99 in Fresno, when 17 vehicles collided, killing two people and causing multiple injuries.