“The only thing you could hear after we got hit was crash after crash after crash behind us,” said Tom Thomas, 43, who was traveling south to St. Louis.
DIVERNON, Ill. — Winds stirred up a wall of dust from farm fields that engulfed a stretch of busy interstate highway in a matter of minutes. The brown cloud’s intensity caked even the insides of vehicles in dirt. As darkness enveloped them, some cars and trucks hurtling down the road put on their brakes; others didn’t.
The highway was closed in both directions after the late-morning crashes on Monday, a scene Gov. J.B. Pritzker described as “horrific.” Witnesses described a sudden burst of dirt completely erasing visibility — “It was like a white out, only it was a brown out,” said Evan Anderson, 25, who was returning home to St. Louis from Chicago.
More than 40 troopers were sent to the scene, including members of the state police traffic crash reconstruction team, Kelly said. Those investigators are very early in their inquiry and have a lot of evidence to review and people to interview as part of their probe.Winds were gusting between 35 and 45 mph , the National Weather Service said. Meteorologist Chuck Schaffer said the area where the crashes occurred is “very flat, very few trees.
Illinois ranks 26th among the states in terms of farm fields planted without tillage. Tilling aerates the soil, controls for weeds and pests and prepares the land for seed germination, but can increase soil erosion — including by the wind.
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