Five people were killed and another 36 were hurt in a crash caused by icy roads Thursday morning in Fort Worth. The crash started with a chain reaction of people losing control on an overpass headed southbound on 35W around 6 a.m.
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More than 100 cars were involved.
"They were going at least 60 or 80 miles an hour," one man involved in the crash said. "It just kept happening, car after car after car. There's nothing you could really do about it. People should know better than to drive like that on the ice when it's 25 degrees in Texas."
He had pulled off the highway into a hotel parking lot to look at damage to his car. He said he feels lucky to still be able to drive his car, and he was not hurt.
"It's like everything was in slow motion, seeing them wreck into each other," he says. "Every time you'd see somebody wreck into somebody else, you're just hoping they're still alive."
*Caution: Video contains disturbing images and bad language
"It is an ongoing investigation. It's one of the biggest, massive accidents I have seen in almost 20 years," says Fort Worth Police Officer Daniel Segura.
Segura said 35W would likely stay closed into Thursday night as police investigated and started removing debris. He says police, firefighters and paramedics also had to make several trips through the line of cars to ensure they had reached everyone who was trapped.
Among the cars damaged was a MedStar ambulance.
"That's another thing to show that no one is exempt from bad weather," says MedStar's Matt Zavadsky.
Zavadsky says the ambulance was parked; no patients or paramedics were inside when it was hit.
"Please make sure you're giving the emergency crews room to work," he says.
MedStar brought its ambulance bus to the site of the crash to treat people at the scene. Zavadsky says, in addition to people with minor injuries during the crash, some others may have slipped and fell when they got out of their car.
*This is a developing story. Follow 1080 KRLD for the latest information