'Definitely angels out there today'

A woman was thrown out of her van and pinned by a large paper roll.
WEST MIDDLESEX, Pa. -- It was an accident of massive proportions that had trauma surgeon Dr. Cathy White-Owen, who saw the icy pileup on Interstate 80 unfold, still shaking hours after the last vehicles crunched together.
"It was the most incredible scene I've ever seen," White-Owen said of the 90 to 100 vehicles that slid and slammed into one another on snow-covered sections of I-80 four miles east of West Middlesex in Mercer County.
The pileups occurred mostly in the westbound lanes, but there were chain-reaction accidents in the eastbound lanes as well. Incredibly no one was killed.
"There were definitely angels out there today," said White-Owen, who works in the trauma unit at Southwest General Hospital in Cleveland, and was on her way home from Pittsburgh with her son Robert.
She accompanied Pennsylvania State Police along the two-mile accident scene in the westbound lanes. "There were cars on their roofs and people were crawling out of them unhurt," she said.
She saw a lot of bumps, bruises and scrapes and a few people who had more serious injuries that needed hospital treatment. "It's incredible that more people weren't hurt," a tearful White-Owen said.
Her car was at the front of the accident scene, and she joined dozens of accident victims at the secondary triage center set up at the Quality Inn in Shenango Township. The more seriously injured were taken immediately to area hospitals; those stranded from the crashes were bused to the hotel for observation.
What happened
White-Owen said she was driving her vehicle westbound in the right lane. Up ahead partially in the passing lane and partially off the road was a disabled tractor-trailer. In front of the tractor-trailer was a state police car and an emergency medical vehicle.
She noticed another tractor-trailer in the passing lane that tried to go around the disabled vehicle and started sliding.
"I had probably a third of a mile to slow down, but when I hit the brakes, it was slick as glass," she said. "Visibility was short."
While White-Owen was able to slide off the road without hitting anything, the tractor-trailer in the left lane jackknifed, blocking the right lane.
"Then I heard five or six boom, boom, booms," she said, describing the start of the pileup.
Raymond Rhodes of Greensburg, Pa., was unlucky enough to be in the first vehicle to hit the jackknifed rig.
"I had hit two patches of ice before this; it didn't really seem to be that bad," Rhodes said of the road conditions.
He saw the tractor-trailer, went to hit the brakes and turned sideways into the rig, followed by another pickup truck and a car. Another tractor-trailer followed and hit the three vehicles.
The last collision hit the passenger side of his truck, causing leg injuries to his girlfriend, Anna Marie Folino of Castle Shannon, Pa. She was taken to a local hospital.
Rhodes thought, "I got to get out of here." He escaped by breaking the door window and crawling out.
He saw another woman with facial cuts in a damaged truck behind his, "but all in all, it could have been a lot worse," Rhodes said.
Counting blessings
Mark Fischer of Beaver, Pa., was counting his blessings but was also teary-eyed as he spoke about his 21-year-old daughter, Sara, who was injured in the pileup and hospitalized at United Community Hospital in Grove City, Pa.
Fischer said he drove his van into a "total whiteout" and was then struck by two trucks. One collision ripped off the passenger door, throwing Sara onto the pavement. A paper roll from one of the trucks landed on his daughter, pinning her. He said it took seven people to lift the roll off her.
White-Owen said Sara was injured but not seriously. She was able to move her legs after the roll was removed, the physician said.
Fischer, who was also thrown out of his van from the collision, said his young granddaughter, sitting in a well-fortified infant seat in the back seat, was uninjured.
Adam Leskanic of Grove City was another accident victim who was shaking his head about the whole episode while resting at the triage center. His Pontiac Vibe was totaled, but he and his wife, Heather, were unhurt.
Adam Leskanic, on his way to visit his parents in Youngstown, said the road and weather seemed fine and then suddenly there was a whiteout. He looked ahead and thought a bridge was coming up. It was actually tractor-trailers and cars piled up, blocking the interstate.
He was able to stop his vehicle before it hit anything, but a truck behind them went sideways and barreled into the Vibe, totaling it.
"We thought about getting out of the car. Some people ran into the woods, but then the cars started flying into the woods," Heather Leskanic said.
"All these vehicles were like accordions, but everyone walked away from it," Adam Leskanic said.
When all this was going on westbound, cars and trucks started piling up eastbound as well.
Mike and Sharon Neary of Oregon, Ohio, said they saw 10 to 15 vehicles damaged from collisions during a whiteout in the eastbound lanes. Their car was hit and totaled.