Only cars casualties in mammoth pileup

59 vehicles crash, clog I-93 in N.H.

Fifty-nine vehicles collided on Interstate 93 yesterday in Derry, N.H. No one was killed, and only 14 people were hospitalized for non-life threatening injuries. (Brian Milosavljevic for The Boston Globe)

As the chartered bus rumbled up the snowy highway yesterday morning en route to a women's ice hockey game in Rutland, Vt., 21-year-old Katelyn Corsino dozed off while listening to country music on her iPod. But an hour into the journey, the player from the University of Massachusetts at Boston awoke abruptly as she was tossed in the air, hitting the seat in front of her.

The bus had hit a car involved in an accident in front of it, but the collision was just beginning to unfold. A tractor-trailer behind the bus jackknifed and came barreling toward it. It missed the bus but struck another car, while seven to 10 other vehicles hit the bus from seemingly every direction.

In all, 46 cars, three buses, eight lightweight trucks, and two tractor trailer trucks collided at about 8:30 a.m. on Interstate 93 in Derry, N.H., less than 10 miles north of the Massachusetts state line. Witnesses described a scene of bloodied people and mangled vehicles, with a car wedged un der the bus. Rescuers spent nearly an hour freeing a man from a pickup truck that was trapped under a tractor trailer.

Yet only he and 14 others of the more than 100 people involved were taken by ambulance to area hospitals - all with non-life threatening injuries.

Among those believed to have been caught in the pileup was a Boy Scout troop from Massachusetts.

"I was petrified," Corsino recalled yesterday afternoon in the lobby of the UMass athletic center, after she and her teammates returned to Boston in a different bus without playing their game. "You would never think you would wake up in the morning and find yourself in a 59-car pileup."

Derry fire battalion Chief David Hoffman said, "It was pretty much a miracle we didn't have more or worse injuries . . . There were cars under other large vehicles. They stopped inches short of being major injuries and possible fatalities."

The cause of the chain-reaction pileup remained under investigation by New Hampshire State Police. But witnesses said snow was piling up on the highway, reducing traffic to only one lane. A few witnesses said authorities told them a car might have spun out while trying to avoid another vehicle on the side of the road, forcing other vehicles to swerve.

The chartered bus transporting the UMass ice hockey team was near the center of the pileup. Maura Crowell, the team's coach, was riding in front when she saw drivers suddenly hitting their brakes as they approached the crest of a small hill.

"I yelled out, 'Brace yourselves. Hold on. Hold on. We're going to hit,' " Crowell recalled.

As the bus driver tried braking, the bus swerved horizontally before striking a vehicle. Then came hits by other vehicles.

"We kept jumping forward," said player Katelyn Pohlman, 20, a junior. "It was really scary."

When teammate Maria Nasta, 21, saw the tractor-trailer plowing right toward the bus, she said, "I closed my eyes and prayed for the best."

Amazingly, none of the players were injured.

Some drivers avoided hitting a car only to find themselves struck from behind.

Brian Milosavljevic, 27, dodged the busload of UMass hockey players, pulling up along the side of the road, but then got struck from behind. Soon after he got out of his Jeep Grand Cherokee to check on the other driver, another car came flying at him. He quickly ran to the other side of the road, but then the tractor-trailer truck jackknifed and slid toward him.

"I freaked," recalled Milosavljevic, a Los Angeles resident who spent the last semester at Harvard University. "I ran over to the guardrail and jumped over it. But then I thought 'what if this thing goes through the guardrail and hits me?' I scrambled down the hill and through the trees."

Area communities sent 17 ambulances to the scene.

Hoffman said the highway was covered with icy packed snow, making for treacherous conditions for rescuers to carry gurneys and to bring in the necessary heavy machinery to pry the vehicles apart.

"We had to crawl over and under vehicles," said Hoffman, who also thanked many of the victims for helping each other.

Bill Boynton, spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, said crews had been plowing the roads since late Saturday night. He did not know when crews last passed through that area before the accident, but said that plowing routes tend to last an hour.

He said the department will review its policies and procedures.

"When a snow event ceases, our goal is to get to dry and bare pavement as soon as possible, but when an event is ongoing we can't guarantee that," Boynton said.

The site of the accident is along an 18-mile stretch that has been plagued by accidents, often due to commuter traffic. It is slated for a nearly $800 million project to widen the two-lane highway by up to two lanes.

Back at UMass, Charlie Titus, vice chancellor for athletics, said: "It's clearly traumatic, but I'm happy everyone is safe and they can smile about it. I've been here for over 30 years and we have never had any vehicle accidents."