WORST TRAFFIC JAM, WORST CAR CRASH

Worst I've ever encountered, anyway.

It usually takes around four and a half hours or so for me to drive from Houston to Baton Rouge. But not Monday. On Monday it took me seven hours to make it back to the Red Stick. Just as I hit the western outskirts of Beaumont on Interstate 10, the flow of traffic came to a near halt. For the next couple of hours I sat in stop and go traffic nearly all the way to cosmopolitan Vidor--I say "cosmopolitan" because Vidor is a town where Klansmen aren't afraid to wear their symbols publicly; that is, instead of "cosmopolitan," I actually mean "stupid fucking redneck." Anyway, the traffic just sucked, and I remember thinking that there just had to be some awful wreck somewhere up the road. Good thing I had my trusty iPod.

I also had my camera:



Worst. Traffic. Ever.

Clearly, this was not a normal state of affairs in Beaumont, Texas, which, even though it has a nice little rush hour, never even approaches this kind of clusterfuck. Two hours later, I found out why.

From the Beaumont Enterprise:

18-wheeler explodes in I-10 wreck

The driver of an 18-wheeler hauling gravel died Monday when his truck struck another 18-wheeler on Interstate 10 eastbound in Rose City, flipped off the highway and exploded, said Trooper Richard Vasser of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The rig driven by Bradley Hagler, 28, of Nacogdoches struck an 18-wheeler hauling cars from behind at 1:37 p.m. just west of Vidor, Vasser said. The truck with cars had just slowed to avoid traffic that had stopped and had moved from the left to the right lane.

And

Four of eight cars on the 18-wheeler started to catch fire and then Legendre said he heard at least 15 explosions.

Troopers opened one eastbound lane of Interstate 10 about 3 p.m., but the service road remained closed until after 6 p.m.

Eastbound traffic quickly backed up to U.S. 69 in Beaumont.

Click here for the rest.

When I finally got to the scene of the accident, four hours and twenty minutes after it happened, they were still in the process of cleaning up, but what I saw made me think right then and there that it was every bit as awful as I later found out. I didn't see the truck that went over the railing, but the car carrier was still there, a charred husk of a vehicle, with all its cargo burnt to a crisp. There was also a tow truck, car in tow, on site that was apparently caught up in the inferno--it, too, was burnt like an Iraqi tank. Men with rakes were trying to scrape up black ash and debris that covered nearly all three lanes of the highway while numerous cops looked on.

Because the traffic picked up almost immediately past the accident scene I was unable to get any pictures of one of the most chilling images I've ever encountered, but I did pull this one from the above linked Enterprise article:


Photo by Andrew Nenque

This is the part I didn't get to see, on the service road. Above the rail you can see a part of the car carrier I mentioned. Like I said, it was just awful. Becky told me to be happy that I didn't leave Houston early enough to be a part of it all.

Thank god I've been sleeping late this summer.

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