There were 62 crashes in King County, all before 10:30 Tuesday morning.
No other county even comes close. By 2 p.m., Pierce County had just eight crashes.
No one was seriously hurt, but the crash on Interstate 405 was by far the worst.
It was an incredible sight, a semi-truck bursting into flames on northbound 405, just south of the Maple Valley highway at 4:15 this Tuesday morning.
“I had just gotten on the freeway,” said Jordon Sundsmo, “and I just looked over and saw all the traffic.”
Sundsmo passed the scene a half hour later, on his way to work.
Did it affect his commute? “No,” he said, “not so much.”
He was lucky. Washington State Patrol shut down northbound I-405 for two full hours, then re-opened just one lane so traffic could crawl by. All of this is blamed on a driver who allegedly cut off that semi.
“It caused a mess, as we know,” said Trooper Rick Johnson.
He acknowledged this was just the start of a miserable commute. There were collisions on SR 520, too.
“But 405 seemed to take the brunt,” he said.
After this crash, troopers had to shut down Southbound I-405 at I-90 where the icy roadway was blamed for at least seven crashes.
None of it bodes well for drivers who will likely have to navigate another icy commute -- come Wednesday morning.
KIRO 7 put the question to the state’s Department of Transportation: What will WSDOT do to prevent a similar calamity as happened Tuesday?
“Yeah, you know with the collisions it’s hard to know exactly what the determining factors are,” insisted Aisha Dalay, transportation department spokeswoman. “I know State Patrol had said speed was a factor. And that’s always the case.”
Still, we wanted to know what WSDOT plans to do so this doesn’t happen again.
“Like I said, WSDOT’s been out there with crews working around the clock,” Dalay said, “using all of our available resources to respond and treat those roadways.”
Both she and WSP say drivers have a responsibility, too, to slow down, especially in icy conditions.
The causing driver is not off the hook, either. Trooper Johnson says he is sure to be cited for allegedly causing this crash.
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