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A massive series of car pileup collisions near the Virginia-North Carolina border killed at least three people, injured 25 people and involved nearly 100 vehicles. It happened along a foggy mountainous stretch of Interstate 77. It took authorities nearly a day to get highway traffic moving again. Per Virginia State Police, at least 95 vehicles were involved in 17 chain-reaction-wrecks within a mile span near the base of Fancy Gap Mountain. Spokeswoman Corinne Geller told reporters the crashes began at around 1:15 p.m. Sunday during fog-heavy conditions. "This mountain is notorious for fog banks. They have advance signs warning people. But the problem is, people are seeing well and suddenly they're in a fog bank," Glen Sage of the American Red Cross office in the town of Galax told reporters. This is not the first of such occurrences. Since 1997, there have been at least six such pileups on the same mountain but Sunday's wreck was the most deadly, per reporters. Wrecks back in 2000 and 2010 killed at least two people and involved dozens of vehicles. Along the interstate in southwest Virginia traffic backed up for about 8 miles in the southbound lanes after the accidents, state police stated. To have the site accessible to emergency vehicles such as fire trucks, ambulances and police, authorities shut the northbound lanes to get to the wrecked vehicles. Drivers were warned about the conditions since 6 a.m. via overhead message boards on Sunday. They advised drivers to slow down because of severe fog conditions. It was found that most of the collisions were caused by drivers going too fast through heavy fog conditions. Near the center of the collisions, a wreck involving at least eight vehicles caused one to catch fire. Photos of the accident were made available online through various publications. A tractor-trailer lay charred next to other burnt and badly crumpled vehicles. Injuries for this series of accidents ranged from minor to serious. School buses shuttled people stranded people to shelters and hotels. Nina Rose, 20, and her mother, were amongst many of the people driving through the area and unexpectedly encountering the accident. They were driving home to Rochester, N.Y. "With so much fog we didn't see much around it," Rose told newspapers. "As we got further up we just saw a bunch of people standing on the median, just with their kids and families all together. There were cars smashed into other cars, and cars just underneath other semi-trucks." Reopening of the highway began Sunday night with the northbound lanes and gradually carried onto the southbound lanes by noon on Monday. Anyone injured is encouraged to contact a car accident lawyer.
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