State authorities have taken some flack for their handling of two crashes on the Maine Turnpike Friday that left hundreds and maybe thousands of travelers stuck on the road for nearly five hours.
They are acknowledging some shortfalls in communications with the public and apologizing for the inconvenience. But they are firmly holding that they had other priorities too: securing a potential crime scene, averting further accidents and showing respect for the man and young boy who were killed.
It was a combination of two accidents that put part of the Turnpike between Wells and Kennebunk in a kind of lockdown during the Friday commute. First, a southbound car hit the median, ejecting the driver. As emergency responders were securing that scene and taking the critically injured driver to he hospital, northbound drivers slowed to gawk.
It’s a slowdown police say played a role in the second, horrific accident. A box truck carrying mail slammed into the back of a passenger car, apparently pushing it into and under the back of a tractor trailer.
Earl Gray, a volunteer driver from Waterboro, and Wyatt Frost, a 5-year old from Lyman were both killed.
The scene posed an unusually complex situation for emergency responders, investigators and Turnpike staff, says Peter Mills, executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority.
“The question was how to get these vehicles disentangled, get the car towed off to our maintenance yard where we could, with some measure of respect, deal with the two bodies. That was the challenge,” he says.
And even once the actual vehicles were removed, the investigation continued. State police Lt. Erik Baker, commanding officer on the scene, says the force of the collision strewed wreckage, skid marks and potential evidence if a crime was committed for dozens of yards, creating an investigatory challenge that could only be solved with methodical, time-consuming work.
“We’re looking at a multitude of different things. We get one shot at this. If we were to open up that road, evidence would have been driven over, evidence would have been swept away, and we would have ruined that scene. So for us to be able to do a complete, thorough and professional job, it was important that we shut the road down,” he says.
That shutdown took some five hours, eventually causing an 8-mile backup, with some traffic diverted to nearby Route 1, which slowed to less than a crawl.
Starting soon after the accident, the Turnpike Authority put out emergency notices on Twitter, Facebook and its network of AM radio public-information signals. Even so, drivers were restless, tweeting, posting and calling in to the Turnpike offices seeking information about when they could move on.
“I’m sorry for the horrific accident. It’s been over 4 hours. Why can’t you open one lane?” one person wrote on Twitter.
“Get your game together Maine! New York would have opened one lane within 45 minutes after full investigation,” another said.
Mills notes that maintenance crews were sent to the scene to provide water, gas and jump starts. And he says the scene was so involved, state police could not give a firm estimate of when the road could be opened up.
“Frankly it’s probably a good thing that we didn’t put out estimates that were inaccurate, because that would have been the temptation,” he says.
Mills acknowledges that the AM radio signal’s value is limited because the signal can fade in and out.
“I had at least one call from somebody who said ‘The flashers went on telling me to tune in to 1610 and all I could get was Indian music,’” he says.
Mills says he will investigate ways to improve that service. And state police spokesman Stephen McCausland says his agency needs to address why it did not use its Facebook site during the event.
“We did it primarily though the news media. The Turnpike Authority did it very effectively direct with their Twitter accounts and their Facebook accounts. Could we do things differently? That will all be part of the after-action review,” he says.
Some of those stuck between the scene and the next exit, where others were being diverted, complained that authorities did not find a way to get them off, opening up a lane on the northbound side or even creating a special route for them on the southbound side. But authorities decided that using the southbound lanes as an exit would just risk more accidents, while estimating that, given the backup on Route 1, the stranded stood a better chance of getting home by waiting for the scene to clear.
If the weather was dangerously cold or hot, Baker says the decision may have been different.
“We would have looked at it maybe a little differently — what we can do for those people?” he says. “But we felt they were all pretty safe and really what they lost was time, and we apologize that they lost that time, but for us we had to do an investigation that was important for the families for all those involved.”
The investigation continues, with police seeking warrants for cellphone and other records that could provide information on the vehicles involved, their drivers and insights into what happened immediately before the accidents. Results aren’t expected for at least a month.
Turnpike and public safety officials are also planning a joint, formal review of the road closure, including the communications efforts.