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AT LEAST two people have been killed and nine left injured after a horrific 35-vehicle traffic pileup on Saturday.
About 33 miles north of the Los Angeles County line in California, several cars and at least 18 semi-trucks smashed into one another on I-5 South, according to the California Highway Patrol (CHP).


Officials cited dense fog as the possible contributing factor to the crash, per CBS affiliate KUTV.
“All the witnesses have fog visibility at approximately 100 feet at the time, so there was heavy fog at the time of the collision,” CHP Buttonwillow Public Information Officer Manny Garcia told the outlet.
Kern County Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Calhoun called the scene “chaotic,” citing wrecked 18-wheelers and several natural gas leaks.
“Yeah, it was pretty chaotic when I first pulled up at the scene — it was compressed natural gas, saddle tanks on the side of some the big rigs that were ruptured, so a lot of the bystanders that weren’t injured were trying to help people and were in a plume of natural gas so we had to deal with that first and get everyone evacuated from that area,” Calhoun explained.
Some of those involved in the crash, including driver Yesenia Cruz, said she could hear others screaming for help.
“Everybody just started screaming for help, just like that, and there were little kids as well crying,” Cruz recalled.
She continued that her GPS navigation had alerted her of a crash, so she slowed down but was quickly rear-ended by another driver.
“Our GPS notified us that there was an accident and so we stopped, and two minutes after we stopped, the car behind us hit us, and that’s when everything just happened fast,” she told KUTV.
California Highway Patrol said that the nine who were injured were left with only mild to moderate wounds.
The names of those killed in the heartbreaking incident have yet to be officially released.
In a separate update, as many as 40 vehicles were said to be involved in the crash, according to NBC News.
It reportedly began around 7:30 am.
Officials still have yet to determine an official cause for the start of the pileup but still believe low visibility from the fog may have initiated the disaster.
Intense fog in the San Joaquin Valley near the accident site is referred to as “tule fog,” per NBC affiliate KGET.
It’s known to appear after a heavy rain, with the saturated soil releasing a low-rising mist.
Severe weather was already expected for the area on Saturday evening as well, according to data from the National Weather Service.
A storm was set to bring in several inches of snow to Grapevine, about 80 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The National Weather Service cited “blizzard conditions with low visibilities from blowing snow” in a post to X, formerly Twitter.