KENT, Wash. — All lanes of southbound Interstate 5 in Kent reopened following a 45-car pileup Sunday afternoon, according to the Washington State Patrol. The pileup caused a three-mile traffic backup and a shutdown of all southbound lanes that lasted about four hours.
Washington State Trooper Rick Johnson said on social media that no serious injuries were reported.
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) first posted about the incident at 1:20 p.m. Traffic was being diverted to SR 516.
A KING 5 employee, Olivia Sullivan, was driving on I-5 South when the crashes occurred. She said she was just about one minute behind the collisions when they happened.
She said, “I started filming, and it was just like nothing I had ever seen before. I mean, it was just car after car, smashed into the next, debris all over the road. People walking around.”
Before the crashes, she said she had noticed there were more cars on the road than usual.
“Everyone in front of me just started to slam on their brakes,” Sullivan said.
Moments later, she got a front-row view of the aftermath.
“And was able to pull to the far side, and just crawl by, before any firefighters or tow trucks or anything like that showed up,” she said.
Patrol troopers shut down all southbound lanes of the freeway as wrecked cars were towed by the dozen. Cars were at a standstill for miles, and the side streets were also clogged with people trying to avoid the mess.
“Around 272nd is where it started gettin' ugly. I had to get off the freeway and then take Pacific Highway, and Pacific Highway is just as jammed,” said one driver who preferred not to share his name.
KING 5 showed him a video of the incident.
“Wow, that's crazy,” he said. “They got to watch their driving out here, because these drivers aren't the best in Seattle, I’ll tell you that."
The roadways were wet from previous rain.
“It had to be slippery,” said the man.
Sullivan echoed that.
“The road was quite slick, and the sun had just come out, and so the glare was pretty intense as well,” she said.
One trooper took to social media to write, “These collisions were caused by drivers going too fast, not the road or weather conditions.”
WSP said they’ll investigate this as one collision, “for paperwork purposes.”
This is not the first time a pileup of this magnitude happened on I-5.
In the mid-90s, a reported 42 cars were involved in a string of collisions – also in the southbound lanes of I-5 -- but in Seattle.
In that incident, one person died and nearly two dozen people were injured.
Troopers reopened all southbound lanes around 4:30 p.m.
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