With rain pouring almost all day, local drivers dealt with accidents across the county Tuesday.
Florida Highway Patrol responded to 21 accidents in Alachua County Tuesday, with the first one occurring just before 8 a.m. and the last one just after 6 p.m. Thirteen of the crashes happened on I-75 between the 380 and 392 mile markers, according to a patrol report.
“Every time we have a lot of rain, there’s a lot of crashes,” Alachua County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Art Forgey said. “The two go hand in hand together.”
At about 9:00 a.m., Cynthia Russo, 22, was driving on I-75 when she saw a car hydroplane into a truck and a gray car hit a guardrail, with two more cars then crashing into it. The fifth-year Santa Fe anthropology student got out of her car to help a passenger out of the gray car.
“She was pinned because the dashboard had caved in and I helped her out,” Russo said.
Officials asked her to leave after because the scene was too dangerous.
Just after noon, another I-75 accident occurred at the northbound 381 mile marker, involving three semi-tractor trailers and a pickup truck. The northbound lanes were shut down for more than four hours while crews cleaned up debris and about 50 gallons of spilled diesel fuel.
Six people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, according to the report.
Nam Diep, the owner of Gainesville’s Lollicup Coffee & Tea, was driving from Tampa when one of the semi tractor-trailers in front of him crashed into another semi tractor-trailer just after the Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park rest stop.
“I heard a loud bang, screeching tires and then there was a truck jack-knifing in front of me,” Diep, 36, said.
The front bumper of a vehicle involved in an accident near 34th Street Plaza lies on the ground Wednesday afternoon. The accident ripped the front and back bumper off of two cars.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 2/18/2015 under the headline “Multiple accidents across the county most likely caused by rain"]
Florida Highway Patrol responded to 21 accidents in Alachua County Tuesday, with the first one occurring just before 8 a.m. and the last one just after 6 p.m. Thirteen of the crashes happened on I-75 between the 380 and 392 mile markers, according to a patrol report.
