SAVANNAH, Ga. – Joel Moore had left home early to drive to a meeting with co-workers. Michael J. Smith was on his FedEx trucking route. Clayton Warnock and his wife, Josephine, had an appointment in Atlanta for a doctor to check his pacemaker.
Their lives all suddenly converged -and ended – along a rural stretch of Interstate 16 early Wednesday when 27 cars, pickup trucks and tractor-trailers braked, swerved and collided in a fiery chain-reaction pileup.
“He was going to Atlanta for a meeting at a hotel,” said Deborah Moore of Clyo, whose 61-year-old husband worked as a wood chip quality technician for International Paper. She said she knew little about what happened in the crash. “I haven’t even wanted to see it on the news or anything.”
One westbound lane of I-16, where fuel vapors from an empty tanker exploded, remained closed Thursday. Authorities were still trying to piece together what caused the pileup that stretched nearly a quarter-mile, including whether a deadly mix of smoke and fog might have blinded drivers.
The Georgia Forestry Commission confirmed a landowner in Montrose, a small town by the interstate in Laurens County, had been permitted to burn brush on a 100-acre tract the day before the crash. Firefighters had also responded to a small wildfire in the same area late Tuesday afternoon.