GALESBURG, Mich. – It was pure panic for drivers on Interstate 94 during whiteout conditions last week.
Dispatchers did their best to calm them down as dozens of 911 calls were made after the nearly 200-vehicle pileup.
"I want you to shut up and listen to me very carefully. I'm at the 95 yard line, Interstate 94," said one 911 caller.
A Canadian truck driver was killed and 22 other people were taken to a hospital with injuries.
"We have a semi truck driver inside the vehicle that's hurt extremely bad," said one caller.
The pileup happened Friday morning on about a 1-mile stretch of I-94 in eastern Kalamazoo County. One semi truck carrying fireworks caught fire, setting off an explosion.
"We've got multiple tractor trailers in the ditch, wrecked. We've got diesel fuel leaking out of several tanks. You need a hazmat team out here. You need to get some heavy-duty wreckers out here with rotators," said a 911 caller.
Investigators have spent hundreds of hours trying to reconstruct the massive crash which closed the stretch of interstate for two days. It's believed to have started when a driver of a van slowed down for bad weather and was struck by a semi truck. That collision prompted crash after crash, after crash.
Police say drivers were traveling too fast for the conditions and following too closely on the icy highway. It's a pileup no one involved ever will forget.