LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Ca. | A twenty-five to thirty vehicle pileup occurred on Saturday, March 23, 2019, around three in the afternoon on the I-5 Freeway in the southbound lanes about two miles south of Gorman Road. Another nearby crash reported another large amount of vehicles involved.
Credit | CAL Trans District 7
RESOURCES
Resources from all outlying areas would be dispatched together forming a Unified Command including the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Ventura County Fire Department, Kern County Fire Department, CHP and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office.
At 1551 hours, Battalion 6 from the LA County Fire Department assumed as the Incident Commander (IC) of the incident.
Fire resources included: KCFD E56, Copters 15, 17, 18 and LA County FD’s Copter 423. Engines 93, 103, USAR 103 and HAZMAT 105. More unknown resources were on-scene assisting with putting out a car fire and assessing multiple casualties.
CAUSE
There is an unknown cause at this time but it has been reported that temps in the area were around 46*F but felt like 38*F with fog and poor visibility.
SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
Social Media was energized by those who were reporting on the major mass casualty incident or also known as a MCI. Significant events that occurred at this incident included the following:
- 25-30 vehicles total in the Gorman area
- Poor visibility caused challenges to those in the air and on the ground
- 1 critical patient with 22 refusing treatment or medical transport
- All southbound lanes of the 5 Freeway were shutdown
- 20-30 vehicles being towed
- 100 stranded cars between two separate multiple traffic collisions
- 1 Injured horse
- 1 car fire
- 3 Copters, 1 Air Attack
Credit | Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Office
For those following this post, there is something that miraculously occurred today in all of this mayhem and that this could have been so much far off worse than it was. It was all due in part because those who were on-scene jumped into action and first responders had quick response times which saved a lot of lives. Command by all those involved from the various Fire and Law Enforcement agencies worked in unison with one another.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Here are some of the eyewitness accounts that broke out on Social Media:
LA County Fire Air Ops | “MCI” LACoFireAirOps responding two Paramedic helicopters to assist LACoFD KernCountyFire VCFD CHPFortTejon AMR_Social with a multiple vehicle pile up on Interstate 5 near Gorman, CA”
Eyewitness Account (Twitter) | “At least two separate, severe pile ups on the southbound 5, North of Exit 202. Thick fog.”
This area has also seen its additional bad wrecks as well. Here is a recent listing of those that have occurred in the several months:
3/20/2019 | A crash is blocking the two left lanes. in #Gorman on I-5 NB at Gorman School Rd. (Media)
3/17/2019 | TRAFFIC COLLISION | FS77 #Gorman | 46001 N Orwin Way | COPT17 transporting 2 patients to an area trauma center. (Media)
3/15/2019 | NB I-5 from SR-138 (Lancaster Rd) to #Gorman Rd- right lane CLOSED until 1pm to recover #overturned big rig on embankment. (CAL Trans District 7)
2/2/2019 | TRAFFIC COLLISION MAJOR | FS77 #Gorman | NB 5 South of Smokey Bear Rd | Multiple vehicles involved with 7-10 patients. 1 DOA, 1 critical. This is the “Highland Incident” (Media)
We are using the following hashtags for this incident: #GormanIC #GormanMCI
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Be safe friends….
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