The pileup by the numbers
By Michael on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022 in Columbia Basin News Columbia Basin Top Stories
UMATILLA COUNTY – Monday’s series of crashes on Interstate 84 have been cleared up and the Oregon State Police and the Oregon Department of Transportation are adding up just what went down.
Zero is the most amazing number of all when OSP looks at the number of fatalities that occurred in the chain reaction. Only one of the injured was hurt badly enough to require air transport to the trauma center at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. A total of 17 people were transported by ground ambulance to area hospitals. An additional two were transported from the Pendleton Convention Center for treatment.
There were 71 people taken to the reunification center at the convention center operated by Umatilla County Emergency Management.
Oregon State Police reports at least 12 other agencies responded to work with them. Those include Pendleton Fire & Ambulance, Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office, Umatilla County Fire District No. 1, Pilot Rock Volunteer Fire Department, East Umatilla County Fire & Rescue, Umatilla Tribal Fire Department, Umatilla Tribal Police Department, La Grande Fire and Ambulance, medic units from Union and Walla Walla counties, and the Oregon Department of Transportation, and Umatilla County Emergency Management.
Six tow companies worked through the night to remove the wrecked vehicles from the interstate. In addition, the Pendleton Convention Center, Elite Taxi, and church vans from unspecified places of worship responded to help the victims of the crashes.
Veteran law enforcement responding to the crash report there was another number that played on their minds when they first viewed the wreckage – 1999. It was on Sept. 25 of that year that six people were killed and more than 20 were injured in a chain reaction crash caused by a dust storm on Interstate 84 just west of Pendleton.
“As I drove up to this one, I flashed back to 1999,” one veteran OSP trooper said of the crashes that closed the freeway when he was a rookie. “This one had a much better ending.”