MoDOT staffers give accounts of initial response to deadly I-57 crashes

SIKESTON, Mo. — For Missouri Department of Transportation employees Kirby Woods and Jason Estes, the morning of March 17 started out just like any other.

Woods, a senior construction inspector for MoDOT in Sikeston, began his commute across the river from Illinois into Missouri, and Estes, maintenance supervisor of MoDOT's facility in Charleston, Missouri, arrived to work at the MoDOT maintenance shed in Charleston, which is located just off Interstate 57.

Around 8 a.m., a thick fog enveloped the Charleston area and wreaked havoc at the 13-mile marker on I-57.

"On the way in for my commute to work, I ran into a weird situation where visibility went completely to zero," Woods said. "The thing that was so weird about it was that it wasn't a typical (fog) situation where you have some transition period where it starts to get worse and worse and worse. In this particular situation, you literally went from being able to barely see to not being able to see at all within a second."

Some vehicles came to a complete stop on the interstate highway, Woods said.

"By you not having that reaction time to react, it started the chain of events with the multiple collisions," Woods said.

The first pileup started in the southbound lanes, and then migrated to the northbound lanes, the Missouri State Highway Patrol reported.

Woods's vehicle was in the very beginning of the chain of vehicles, he said. He was about 5 feet from the first collision, which involved a semitrailer.

"I was able to get over into the median to get out of harm's way, and then after that, it wasn't so much you could see, but you could hear collision after collision after collision happening," Woods said.

It all happened in a matter of minutes and seconds, he said.

"It was tough because you didn't know where to go. Stuff eventually calmed down about 2 minutes into it, and I was able to get my vehicle out of the road and I was able to walk a little to examine the scene, and I saw where it was safe to get and kinda of got to safety. ... It was still hard to see at this point what was going on."

However, Woods said his first thought was to call for assistance.

"I found out when I started calling people — no one did know about it," Woods said,

His first call, Woods said, was to Estes who was at the Charleston maintenance shed, just off the I-57 at Exit 12.

"I asked him if help was on the way, and he didn't, had no idea, what I was talking about, and I explained to him what was going on, and everybody jumped on," Woods said.

Within minutes, people started showing up to help, Woods said.

"Kirby called me, and my main goal was to get the interstate shut down because you couldn't even tell what was going on," Estes said. "He said they were piling up on the interstate, and I don't recall that he said exactly where. I went on top of the overpass to try to see and you couldn't hardly see a vehicle go under the overpass."

So Estes called his crew.

"I said we have to shut the interstate down right now because I didn't know if that was the only place right north of us or multiple crashes," Estes said. "Of course, emergency vehicles were kind of driving in the blind, too, so I knew we needed to get the interstate shut down and try to at least get things to stop."

Thirty minutes later, the sun popped out, and the fog kind of lifted.

In his 22 years working for MoDOT, Estes said he's never experienced a day like he did March 17.

"It was the worst I've ever seen, and what made recovery tough was the trailers and trucks were just tore up so bad. With a typical crash, you hook up to a truck and tow it off. These were tore all to pieces and it takes a long time to do it."

Estes returned home at 9:45 p.m. that night, having started at 6:30 that morning.

"I was on my feet all day. I was on the phone a whole lot that day," Estes recalled. "By that afternoon, we kind of had traffic positioned, so that helped moved things along."

Because he was in the epicenter of the crashes, Woods said he was on the scene most of the day and was eventually able to leave after EMS and tow trucks arrived.

According to the Patrol, the series of accidents involved 43 vehicles and left five dead and 15 injured. The interstate was closed for more than 20 hours, reopening at 5 a.m. the next day.

Woods and Estes were recognized by MoDOT and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the garage at MoDOT's office complex Thursday in Sikeston for their efforts during the March 17 incident.

However, both Woods and Estes said they think they did what anyone else would have in their situations.

"I was just doing my job," Estes said.

Woods said MoDOT employees are trained to respond to people.

"Ironically, we just had some training not long ago, so that was still fresh in my mind, and that part of it, is just second nature," Woods said.

He said it's a sense of humanity — something he and others have — which is why he thinks a lot of people would have helped out as much as they could in that situation.

"I think I'm just one person out of just about anybody that would have done whatever they could do to help out in that situation — and what the help is — if it's making phone calls or checking on somebody in a vehicle that's wrecked, you just do whatever you can do," Woods said. "I think just about anybody would have done what I did or even more."