3 crashes stymie I-40 west traffic; big rig spills load, then 2 wrecks occur in stalled-car queue

Truck driver Jerry Williams wipes sweat from his forehead as he talks to an Arkansas Highway Police officer after he flipped his tractor-trailer carrying a load of poultry feed on westbound Interstate 40 near Arkansas 161 Monday in North Little Rock.
Truck driver Jerry Williams wipes sweat from his forehead as he talks to an Arkansas Highway Police officer after he flipped his tractor-trailer carrying a load of poultry feed on westbound Interstate 40 near Arkansas 161 Monday in North Little Rock.

A series of crashes Monday on Interstate 40 blocked traffic for hours and led to one person being airlifted to a hospital for life-threatening injuries.

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Emergency workers tend to one of two people transported to the hospital Monday afternoon after a three-vehicle wreck in the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 at the 159 mile marker near Interstate 440.

A tractor-trailer overturned shortly after 11 a.m. in North Little Rock, spilling grain across the interstate and blocking all westbound traffic until about 3:30 p.m., said Danny Straessle, a spokesman for the state Highway and Transportation Department. Eastbound traffic wasn't affected.

The crash happened near Exit 157, about 3 miles east of Interstate 30, and crews were able to divert traffic onto Arkansas 161. The road's traffic signal wasn't calibrated to handle a higher volume of vehicles, so a worker from North Little Rock had to manually sequence the lights from the intersection's switchbox, Straessle said.

[GALLERY: Click here for photos from the scene of the I-40 truck wreck]

As traffic was backing up on the interstate, a vehicle crashed into four others shortly after noon near the Interstate 440 interchange about 2 miles to the east, critically injuring at least one person, Straessle said.

The force of the crash swept the vehicles, including a recreational vehicle, mostly off the interstate. Without much debris on the road, traffic to Arkansas 161 resumed quickly, Straessle said.

A crash into a line of stopped cars, known as an end-of-queue crash, can be "extremely devastating," Straessle said. "You have a high-speed, high-volume interstate -- and all of a sudden, you come upon a parking lot where there shouldn't be one, and you can't stop."

Another end-of-queue crash happened soon after that in roughly the same area, Straessle said, but little information was available Monday on the third crash. Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said no fatalities had been reported from the crashes.

The driver of the tractor-trailer in the initial crash, Jerry Lee Williams with Drew Ag Transport Inc. of Greenville, Ohio, had visible injuries to his right arm and shoulder as he provided a statement to a trooper at the scene. No other injuries were reported.

"All I know is, I was sliding into one of those yellow posts, and the next thing I knew I was landing sideways," he told a reporter.

"When I stopped, I just saw an opening and I came through it. Took my seat belt off and came out," Williams added.

Metro on 07/26/2016

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