100 Vehicles Pile Up in Dense Fog; 1 Killed, 46 Hurt : Accident: Cloud bank reduces visibility to less than 50 feet in Cajon Pass. Wreckage is scattered over more than a mile on Interstate 15.

Three connected chain-reaction crashes involving nearly 100 vehicles, one of them a packed school bus, killed one person and injured 46 others Friday along a fog-shrouded portion of Interstate 15 in the San Bernardino Mountains.

At the rain-slicked site of the nearly simultaneous crashes, twisted and damaged cars and trucks remained long after the midmorning wreck scattered vehicles over more than a mile of I-15’s southbound lanes, which were closed for more than eight hours.

At least one car was piled atop another vehicle, while others were wedged beneath 16-wheel rigs and crunched together. Tractor trailers were contorted into jackknife positions and some tractors had become unhinged from the cabs.

About two dozen big-rig trucks and a school bus carrying 53 sixth-graders from Victorville on a field trip to Ontario Airport were among the vehicles in the accidents. Four students, from Puesta del Sol Elementary School, were slightly injured, officials said.

“It was real foggy and you couldn’t see a thing,” said Deron Knox, 11, who escaped injury. “I felt like I was going to die.”

Eleven of the 46 people injured were hurt seriously and taken to hospitals, authorities said. Numerous others were treated for minor injuries at the scene.

The accidents occurred shortly after a cloud bank reduced visibility to less than 50 feet on what has become a major commuting corridor for about 70,000 people who travel between the Los Angeles Basin and San Bernardino County.

“It was just one crash after another, just crash after crash after crash,” said Army Spec. Dean Mathews, whose car was involved in the accident, which occurred in the Cajon Pass about a mile south of its 4,259-foot summit. “The most amazing part was that it just kept going on. All I kept hearing was crunch, crunch, crunch.”

The single fatality in the accidents involved an elderly woman auto passenger who was suffering cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived. It was unclear whether the woman, who had not yet been identified by authorities as of late Friday, suffered a heart attack before the accident or whether the trauma triggered it.

Friday’s accident was reminiscent of last Thanksgiving weekend’s tragic Interstate 5 chain collision in the San Joaquin Valley that left 17 dead and 151 injured after wind-driven dust dramatically cut visibility. However, it also differed in one significant detail: While CHP officers were aware of the visibility problems three hours before last November’s accident, there was little advance warning of Friday’s fog.

Police investigators said that the chain-collision crashes, which occurred in three major clusters on a downhill slope about two miles north of California 138, began when a rapidly moving cloud bank blew across the freeway.

“There was sunshine on the top of the pass and it was clear on the bottom,” said CHP Cpl. John Savage. “The cloud bank just blew in across the traffic lanes without any warning.”

In the first series of chain collisions, an empty produce truck jackknifed into the school bus, causing nearly 45 cars and big-rig trucks to slam into each other, CHP spokesmen said.

Teacher Jana Ruisch, one of two teachers escorting the students, said that when she got up from her seat moments after the initial collision to check for injuries, the bus was hit by another truck from behind. In order for the students to get off the bus, the front door had to be pried open, she said.

“One minute it was clear, and the next you couldn’t see 20 feet in front of you,” said teacher Rey Rodriguez. “Cars were flying all around us.”

Investigators said that motorists’ failure to slow down quickly enough amid the foggy conditions also contributed to the accident.

“People just don’t seem to slow down the way they should and this is the result of it,” said CHP Officer Lorin Orchard.

However, even many motorists who were able to stop before hitting wrecked vehicles became involved in the chain collisions when vehicles struck them from behind.

Gene and Beatriz Hite were struck twice from behind, and the impact pushed their car into a truck.

“The scary part was, once we stopped, they kept on hitting us from behind,” Beatriz Hite said. “All you could hear were more cars crashing into one another.”

For hours afterward, many motorists remained in their vehicles, waiting for cleanup crews and the dozens of tow trucks to move damaged cars and trucks out of the way.

“The people who were in the crash were very lucky,” said Henri Brachais, a battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry who helped victims at the scene. “This could have been a lot worse.”