Crazy Conditions Cause Major Pileup on Icy Billings Highway

Wow, it must have been a frightful experience trying to navigate one of the main thoroughfares in Billings over the weekend!

The Associated Press and Billings Gazette tells us that dozens of vehicles crashed into each other on an icy Interstate 90 highway bridge over the Yellowstone River outside Billings. Motorists described it as resembling a wrecking yard with badly damaged cars and trucks.

The Montana Highway Patrol said the pileup involved about 30 vehicles. No fatalities were reported but two people were critically injured. More on those injuries in a moment.  The patrol says ice on the bridge was the accordion-effet cause for the wreck, with cars slamming into each other one right after another. The accident closed Interstate 90 for a time. Billings streets were then tied up with traffic as drivers sought alternate routes.

And our thoughts are with two Good Samaritans, who were trying to help stranded motorists during the chaos, in particular one family that was in distress. AP and Billings Gazette say two Montana teenagers sustained serious injuries when they fell from the I-90 Yellowstone River bridge while trying to help others stuck in the massive pileup. Seventeen-year-old Gahge Whitemanrunshim and 19-year-old Celea Poitra had been trying to rescue a woman and two children stuck inside a vehicle. Poitra was being treated for a broken back, lacerated kidney and other injuries. Her family said she was in an intensive care unit and expected to need multiple surgeries.

The family estimated the fall to be around 60 feet.