Was I-35W treated for ice before deadly Fort Worth pileup? Video offers some details
The group responsible for ice prevention on the stretch of highway that was the site of a 133-car pileup treated the road for ice two days before the wreck, according to a video shown to North Texas lawmakers.
But legislators still have questions about the circumstances of the Feb. 11 wreck that left six people dead.
State Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, said the video showed North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners’ pretreatment truck applying brine — a solution of salt and water on Feb. 9 — to Interstate 35W between Northeast 28th Street and Northside Drive. The solution is good for at least 72 hours, North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners said.
Lawmakers were not provided evidence the brine was reapplied after Tuesday, Romero said.
“There’s many more discussions about whether or not this brine solution is the right solution — how and when it should be reapplied,” Romero said.
Romero, Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, and Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat who chairs the House Transportation committee, were show the footage Friday during a virtual meeting with officials from NTE Mobility Partners and the Texas Department of Transportation, Romero said.
Powell said the call was the first of many in the investigation process that will inform lawmakers as they craft bills to ensure roads are safe.
“I’m clear that our Tarrant County legislative delegation is going to hold them accountable to make sure that we get to the bottom of this,” Powell said.
The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency that reviews transportation accidents, is investigating the crash, focusing on snow and ice treatment procedures.
The pileup started soon after 6 a.m. The roads were covered by what appeared to be a sheet of ice. On the morning of the wreck, surface temperatures were below freezing and weather radar showed a small cloud of freezing rain moving across the I-35W corridor near the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Following the crash, Texas lawmakers called for an investigation that includes how the roads were treated to prevent freezing.
I-35W is owned and operated by the Texas Department of Public Safety, but the state has partnered with NTE Mobility partners to build and maintain Tarrant County highways with TEXPress toll lanes.
Robert Hinkle, spokesman for NTE Mobility Partners, has said maintenance crews began pre-treating its corridors on Tuesday and had been “spot treating” since.
In addition to briefing lawmakers, Hinkle said NTE Mobility Partners is assisting NTSB with its investigation and working with the Fort Worth Police Department on an investigation it has launched.
“We are satisfied that we undertook the right procedures and treatments and used the correct digital signage for the circumstances,” Hinkle said in a Sunday email.
He added that NTE constantly monitored weather conditions ahead of the storm throughout the corridor. Because no rain occurred that could have washed the brine off the road, it would have not been appropriate to treat the corridor again, he wrote.
In the days after the pileup, North Texas experienced another emergency situation when many in the region and across the state were left without power amid frigid weather. The response of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — a nonprofit corporation that’s regulated by the Public Utility Commission — has been criticized by elected officials.
The pileup and the outages, which spanned days for some, raise questions about public-private partnerships entered into by the state, Romero suggested.
“The competition is good because the best always come to the top, but without some government boundaries and guidelines, some minimum standards, this is what we ended up with,” Romero said.
Romero called the wreck “unacceptable.”
“We’re not going to rest until we get answers,” he said.
Staff writer Gordon Dixon contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 21, 2021 at 1:46 PM.
