71 survived injuries in Fort Worth’s I-35W pileup. But surviving wasn’t the end of it.
READ MORE
Deadly pileup: Victims and their families are still waiting for answers
In February 2021, six people died and dozens were injured in a pileup of more than 130 vehicles on Interstate 35W north of downtown Fort Worth.
Expand All
So many of them were alone and commuting.
Some were employed as drivers and were on the job.
Of the 71 people who were injured on Interstate 35W in Fort Worth on Feb. 11, 2021, and treated at hospitals in the hours after the collisions and crashes, none was a child. It was a calamity of adults driving at predawn, their vehicles compressed across three express lanes.
Four of them died as they sat in their driver’s seats. Two were outside cars when they were struck. Those killed were Tiffany Gerred, 34, of Northlake; Aaron Watson, 45, of Fort Worth; Christopher Vardy, 49, of Boyd; William Williams, 54, of Pahoa, Hawaii; Michael Wells, 47, of Justin; and Tamara Mendoza, 46, of DeSoto.
For the remainder who survived, the year since has been spent at physical therapy appointments, awaiting depositions in lawsuits and recalling memories of the horror.
When he left his Fort Worth driveway early that Thursday, David Garcia hoped to get in a workday handling quality control for an aerospace company before the weather turned.
But the interstate lanes were already icy, slick with freezing rain, and the first vehicles to collide were followed by others whose drivers were unable to stop.
Garcia, 53, was in his sport utility vehicle, driving between two semitrailers.
The 18-wheeler in front slowed, then inched along before stopping entirely. Garcia did the same.
He was looking through his windshield at the back of the truck ahead when his vehicle was struck. A jackknifing semitrailer crashed into the rear of Garcia’s vehicle and pushed it into the semitrailer in front.
Behind him, cars crushed together and bounced about. Glass burst.
Headlights filled Garcia’s back window.
“It was really bright. That’s all I remember is how bright it was,” he said.
Garcia squirmed from a partially open driver’s side door.
Because his view was blocked by the height of a semitrailer, Garcia did not know how vast the pileup had become. The collisions involved 130 vehicles, 16 trailers and 136 people, according to the National Transportation Safety Board and the Fort Worth Police Department.
Out of his vehicle, Garcia stood on ice in the dark and listened to screams. A bleeding woman asked for someone to help her.
Drivers of vehicles whose engines were still running offered a refuge from the cold.
“We couldn’t do anything so we had to get back in our cars,” Garcia said.
The rising sun exposed the broad tangle. After about 90 minutes in his vehicle, Garcia walked with others to a bus, where they talked with firefighters and police officers and were driven to a community center.
He washed his face. Got some coffee. Tried to compose himself.
Garcia suffered a neck and hand injury. He declined to immediately go to a hospital and went later that evening. He would have surgery to reconstruct parts of his hand.
Garcia is among the people involved in the crashes who have filed at least 17 lawsuits in state courts in which the defendants are other drivers, companies that employed them, a state government department and NTE Mobility Partners, the private company that operates the TEXPress toll lanes.
Negligence caused the crashes, the lawsuits allege.
The commercial trucking companies and drivers are accused in the lawsuits of failing to pay attention, maintain safe speeds and operate the vehicles in a safe manner.
The Texas Department of Transportation and NTE failed to monitor and maintain the interstate, failed to discover hazards or defects on the roadway, failed to de-ice and close the highway because of the conditions and failed to monitor the weather, according to the lawsuits.
The transportation department has argued that it is immune from suit and liability. It and other defendants have answered in filings that the claims are unfounded. The cases have not been resolved.
Garcia is certain there were flaws in procedure. He said he hoped that the NTSB’s final report on its investigation will answer questions about the precise failures and missteps.
“We’re in the middle of winter,” Garcia said two weeks ago.
A similar pileup could, he said, happen again.
This story was originally published February 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
