Tragedy grips New York this holiday season as a freak pileup involving an unconfirmed amount of vehicles and at least one tractor-trailer shuts down eastbound Long Island Expressway between exits 65 through 69.
According to authorities, the major accident cost the life of one victim and injured another 32 motorists on New York's Long Island. In fact, the incident was so severe that vehicles were scattered over hundreds of yards and some even caught fire.
The incident was first reported sometime before 3 p.m. in bright and sunny conditions today. Authorities still have the span of highway closed for clean up.
Into the night, authorities will investigate the cause of the bizarre incident that occurred in a rather rural part of eastern Long Island.
Having witnessed the accident, driver Danny Gershonowitz spoke with Newsday: "The gentleman to the right of me went down to the ground and was praying. When I looked in my rear view mirror, there was smoke and flames coming out," he said.
A truck driver yelled for help to alert Gershonowitz and other drivers as he gingerly climbed out of his smoking truck. Gershonowitz recalled, "Pretty soon, the whole front of the truck was engulfed in fire, and that's when people started backing away. The police came and asked everybody to run and get out of the way, because I guess they thought it would explode."
Sadly, this has been the third major traffic accident this week. A 60 care pileup occured in a California interstate last night while another 100 car pileup in Texas left two people dead earlier this week.
The California pileup was caused by icy conditions while the incident at Texas was caused by heavy fog. The latest pileup in New York occured in sunny afternoon conditions.
Drive safe this holiday, everyone! Watch the horrendous raw footage of the Long Island Expressway pileup from earlier today below:
