re: Multiple crashes on I-55 Manchac Swamp Bridge, at least 7 dead

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causeway police ticket money that they write on that bridge every day

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Don’t forget about the toll money they still get everyday. I’d like to know how much money that bridge is taking in everyday for people heading south.

Looking at the pics, some cars are mangled and the drivers probably died on impact. My stomach gets sick wondering how many were trapped in their cars and possibly conscious and burned to death. Those poor people. I always think of that woman Henry Riggs killed where she was screaming while her car was on fire and couldn’t get out.

Is there a list of victims?

I got this text yesterday :

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DUDE! You are lucky you didn’t get stuck in that garbage stuff yesterday on the interstate. I know it’s kind of far away from your path but still. ( Edited) had a niece caught up in there. She got stopped in the traffic she got out of the car to see the damage of the of a car she got hit and killed.

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Does anyone know someone who died in this crash? Names should be coming out now.

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I know someone who saw what was developing... got off to the side of the road and everything continued to happen around him... including the tanker truck which caught fire

he wasn't hurt... and even more spectacularly... didn't have a scratch on his vehicle

but had a bunch of glass shards from the wrecked vehicles around him in the bed of his truck

in 1 of the aerial photos from LSP of the destruction... he was located just off the top left corner of the photo

That's a tough call in a situation like that. Getting out of the vehicle is a risk, staying in the vehicle is a risk. There's really no good choice, especially if it is on a bridge like that.

One of the worst examples of that I have ever seen was on a Los Angeles freeway. A car was broke down on the inside lane, barely on the shoulder. Vehicles kept rolling by at 80+, each seemingly closer than the last. One clipped it, then another, followed by maybe another. Finally, a vehicle squared it up full-on, absolutely plowing into it. All of this was being filmed by a stringer who couldn't do much to help. When the last car hit it, a fire started. The car went up pretty quickly, and the stringer guy threw down his camera and ran to the car. He ended up somehow getting the door opened and was able to drag the driver out. The car fully engulfed moments later. All the while, vehicles were still rolling by on the interstate.

This scene was caught by a camera crew that was recording for the one season show "Shot in the Dark" on Netflix, centered around LA stringers.

Inside Edition piece on the wreck/rescue (YouTube)

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NEW ORLEANS — We are learning a father and his 6-year-old son were among the eight people who lost their lives Monday along Interstate 55. Close friends said 49-year-old Nakia Gaines was with his son, Mason, taking him to school when tragedy struck.

They tell WDSU their vehicle ran into a tanker that caught fire along I-55, dying from their injuries. The accident happened on a day there was heavy fog and smoke from nearby Bayou Sauvage. It impacted the visibility of drivers on the road.

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LINK

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Does anyone know someone who died in this crash? Names should be coming out now.

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My daughters classmate.

LINK

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Jennifer Hall was on the job as assistant principal at a northshore elementary school when she missed a call from a stranger who, at that very moment, was stanching the blood pouring from her husband's head in the midst of the chaotic Interstate 55 pileup on Monday.

That stranger was Darla Bankston, a nurse at North Oaks Medical Center in Hammond who wasn’t injured in the crashes. So she immediately stopped her car and ran back toward the jumble of twisted wreckage to help whoever she could.

As Robert Hall, 60, recovered from a brain bleed in North Oaks' intensive care unit Wednesday, Jennifer Hall said Bankston and two other "angels" helped save her husband by rolling him on borrowed gurney for more than a mile through the maze of wrecked vehicles and transporting him to the hospital in the bed of a pickup truck.

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Robert Hall, an agent with the Louisiana Department of Probation and Parole, was driving southbound on I-55 near the Manchac bridge just before 9 a.m. Monday when the dense superfog caused the cars in front of him to slow, his wife said.

Though he safely came to a stop, an 18-wheeler barreled into the back of his car and several other vehicles, Jennifer Hall said.

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Robert Hall was wearing his seat belt and the air bags deployed. But he still hit his head on the steering wheel, opening a gash across his forehead, she said.

As the 18-wheeler and cars around him caught fire, Hall managed to escape his vehicle before it, too, began to burn.

Within minutes, the ammunition he carried in his vehicle began to explode.

"There were 2,500 rounds. All popped off, which only added to the stress of the whole environment. People are hearing gunshots go off," Jennifer Hall said.

Bankston spotted Robert Hall and began doing what she could to treat his severe head injury.

Because his cellphone was still inside his burning car, Bankston used her own to call his wife. Jennifer Hall got to briefly speak with her husband, who was in and out of consciousness, she said.

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Hall immediately called her husband's co-workers at the probation office in Covington. Agents Joseph "Joey" Cotton and Mike Phelps raced to I-55 but couldn't get close to the crash because of traffic congestion.

"Joey and Mike just started running up the highway, through all the wrecks," Hall said. "They ran a mile and a half."

The large amount of debris meant ambulances had trouble getting to the burning cluster of crashes on I-55 south. So, Cotton and Phelps borrowed a rolling gurney from one of the ambulances and pushed it through the maze of wrecked vehicles, Hall said.

They loaded Robert Hall onto the gurney and made the trip back and down the interstate's entrance ramp. But the ambulance that had been there earlier had already left with another patient, Jennifer Hall said.

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Unsure of when the next one might arrive and aware of Robert Hall's critical head wound, they put him in the bed of their pick-up truck, strapping him down with bungee cords before making the drive to the hospital, his wife said.

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Katie Ricks, 24, also met Bankston atop I-55 South after she desperately scrambled through the smoke and ammunition explosions. Bankston walked over and calmly began asking the stunned Ricks questions.

"I'm thankful she came up to me. I was in a lot of shock, and thought I was going to die. She helped distract me," said Ricks, of Loranger.

Ricks, who works in radiology, went to work helping Bankston tend to the injured. She handed over her children's diapers, which Bankston used to stop the blood flow from Robert Hall's head.

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"She didn't hesitate," Ricks said of Bankston. "Given the circumstances, she was amazing with giving clear directions."

Jennifer Hall got to meet Bankston in person Monday night at the hospital, though Hall wasn't sure she was fully able to convey her thanks.

Bankston didn't have to stop and help her husband. Cotton and Phelps didn't have to rush to the crash site to do the same.

"How do you express your gratitude for that?" she asked through tears. "You can't. I don't have the words."

Jennifer Hall said was hoping her husband would make it out of ICU by Wednesday night. In the meantime, she's been buoyed by the stories of everyday heroes who stopped to free a trapped victim, to help carry someone to safety, or to treat injuries.

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Advocate reporting I-55 south is set to reopen soon