A highway in Illinois outside Chicago
At least six people were killed on a major highway in Illinois on Monday after a dust storm caused as many as 70 vehicles to crash, state officials said. The road was closed to vehicular traffic in both directions as a result.
The highway began to reopen Tuesday morning, the Illinois Department of Transportation said in a post on Twitter.
Multiple crashes occurred along Interstate 55 around 11 a.m. local time in Montgomery and Sangamon counties as dust from newly plowed nearby fields engulfed the roadway, state police said. A total of 72 vehicles were involved in the incidents including two semi tractor trailers that caught fire.
Springfield, the state capital, is in Sangamon County and the crashes took place south of the city.
Constructed in the 1960s, I-55 is a major north-south Interstate Highway in the Central United States. It connects the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
As of 11 a.m. EDT, the identity of only one fatality, 88-year-old Shirley Harper of Franklin, Wisconsin, had been made. Police were still working to identify the other five individuals who were killed in the crashes and notify their families.
Meanwhile, 37 people have been hospitalized with injuries ranging from life-threatening to minor, with ages ranging from 2 to 80 years old, a spokesman for the Illinois State Police, Major Ryan Starrick told reporters.
The accidents took place in both north- and southbound lanes, although all of the fatalities were on the northbound side.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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