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This photo of the crash site on Interstate 70 between Manhattan and Topeka was taken by Judge Jerome Helmer of Salina. He and his wife, Susan, were in one of the cars at the front of the wreck.
A Christmas present to cherish
By LINDA MOWERY-DENNING
Last Updated: January 02, 2008
This is being written Christmas Eve as “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” plays on the living room television and the front window glows with the reflection of our holiday tree. Tomorrow morning the children and I will open our presents.
But already our family has received a very special gift this Christmas. Matt and I are alive. Even more remarkable, beyond a few cuts and bruises, we’re uninjured.
We weren’t sure it was going to turn out that way.
Two days ago, on Saturday morning, Matt and I left Manhattan for Lawrence, where we planned to spend the night with Allie before returning to Manhattan Sunday for an extended family Christmas.
We’d been driving for about 30 minutes when a few snow flurries suddenly became a blinding winter storm. As I prayed for an exit where we could wait out the snow, we saw a young man along the north side of the highway.
He was jumping up and down, frantically waving his arms and screaming at oncoming traffic.
I slowed the Jeep even more, from a crawl to little more than a coast. Then we saw it — up ahead, inches away it seemed — a tangle of buses and trucks and cars across both lanes.
I pumped the brakes, trying to get the Jeep stopped before we became part of the wreck. The truck went into a skid, turning half way around in the outer lane before striking a guard rail. I breathed a sign of relief as the truck came to a stop. We hadn’t hit the mess in front of us and we hadn’t rolled down the embankment.
Then another unexpected moment. My head snapped as a car rammed us from behind. After the initial crash, there was hardly any noise at all, just Matt and I repeatedly asking each other whether the other one was okay.
The scene was almost surreal outside the truck. A half-dozen people stood in the snow beside a van at the bottom of the embankment. The cars and trucks in front of us appeared empty. We couldn’t see beyond a large tour bus and tractor-trailer that stood side by side, acting like an immovable wall to the dozen or more cars and trucks piled up behind them. A white pickup truck was between them, twisted and partly off the ground.
Finally, the quiet was broken by the sirens from law officers and emergency personnel from — we would learn later — a 10-county area. They immediately searched the wreck site, looking for injured or worse. One by one, those hurt in the pileup were freed from their cars and carried to ambulances parked across the medium in a west bound lane.
We remained in what was left of my Jeep, waving emergency workers on as they stopped time and again to make sure we were safe. Snow blew into my side of the truck from the door, which no longer fit the opening. Still, we were able to start the engine to keep warm.
About an hour after my Jeep hit the guard rail, we joined dozens of other carless travelers aboard two buses bound for the McFarland Fire station. After giving us cookies and coffee, volunteers again herded us onto the school buses, this time to take us two blocks to the Lutheran church.
That is where we spent the evening, almost into the morning hours of the next day, exchanging stories with other crash survivors and waiting for the authorities to reopen the interstate, thus allowing us to continue our holiday journeys as best we could.
A Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper kept us informed of the progress. He also is the one who told us about the crash’s only fatality, the first driver to lose control of his car on the snow-packed interstate.
However, for all of us, I think, this isn’t a story about death. This is a story about the two dozen or more families who received the same gift as Matt and I did this Christmas.
Greg somehow escaped through his broken window just before his Ford Escort was mangled by a large truck.
Later, after his car was towed to Alma, Greg choked back tears after he saw it. The inside was littered with pieces of other cars and trucks.
“If I’d stayed in my car ...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
A young woman survived sliding under a tractor-trailer truck before her small gray car was hammered from behind by another driver. Emergency workers found only scratches when they were finally able to free the woman. As she tried to unlatch her seat belt after the initial wreck, the young woman inadvertently put the back of her seat down and fell backwards, an act which probably saved her life.
Inside the bus were soldiers from Fort Riley on their way to Kansas City to catch plane rides home. One of the soldiers, the mother of two, will be sent to Iraq after Christmas. Others involved in the wreck came from California, including the young man who stood along the side of the road trying to warn oncoming motorists of the danger ahead, Colorado, Indiana and, of course, Kansas.
One woman, a resident of Greensburg, survived both a tornado and the accident. She told me how much she looked forward to the new year — and the passing of 2007.
The other part of this story involves the professionals and volunteers who left their families three days before Christmas to respond to what one firefighter called “the worst accident I’ve ever worked.” The woman bus driver who took us to McFarland finally asked to borrow a cell phone. Her meat loaf had been in the oven for several hours and she wanted her husband to give it a decent burial.
At the Lutheran church, more volunteers provided blankets and coffee and anything else they could think of to make us comfortable. And the food. Pots of soup. Homebaked cookies and candies. Sandwiches.
“We didn’t even call anybody,” one of the women of the church told me. “When the word spread in town that you were here, this is what happened.”
They also made sure everyone had a way home. Church members drove stranded travelers to Topeka, so they could find motel rooms and rent cars. I suspect they also provided one penniless traveler with enough money to pay for a bus ticket to Chicago.
Kansas Highway Patrol troopers and law officers from Wabaunsee County, where the wreck happened, and those called from other places were professional and caring.
“There were a lot of good things that happened out there,” said a Salina man who survived the crash with his wife.
“People did whatever they could to help.”
As we celebrate Christmas tomorrow, we’ll think of those who were with us at McFarland.
More than 30 vehicles were involved in the crash. They were so tangled, it took almost 12 hours to clear the interstate. Despite such damage, all but one of us made it home safely.
That is truly a Christmas gift to cherish.
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