HARDIN, Mont. — Chilling new video provided by a truck driver on the scene of Friday’s fatal 21-vehicle pileup after an impromptu dust storm showed the catastrophic damage to some vehicles that left six people, including two children, dead.
Jose Strickland, who was team-driving a rig with his father when the storm brought everything along that stretch of Interstate 90 to a gnarled standstill, shared the video on his Facebook page.
(Warning: The following video contains graphic images and may be disturbing.)
“Visibility dropped in an instant, and we found ourselves skidding to a stop and everyone scrambling off the road to safety,” Strickland, 26, wrote alongside the video.
“I still can’t get over the fact that we were one truck away from disaster. For whatever reason my Dad Raul Joseph Beger decided to take the wheel after lunch and to say the least I’m glad his experience came into play,” Strickland added.
Winds topping 60 mph were responsible for whipping up the dust storm, which caused 21 vehicles to crash, including six semi trucks, KULR-TV reported.
In an interview with “Today,” Strickland said that he and Beger, who both drive for Houston-based Rivas Trucking, were en route to Aurora from Billings when the storm struck. Fortunately, an associate radioed the father-son team and warned them to stop because he was only a few feet short of the pileup in progress.
“It was a chain reaction. There was no alert,” Strickland told “Today.”
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