Two children among six dead in Montana highway pileup

BILLINGS, Montana — Two children are among the six people who died in a Montana pileup after a Friday evening dust storm caused blackout conditions on Interstate 90, a major route in both Montana and the Western U.S.

Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jay Nelson said investigators so far have found no other factors that contributed to the pileup that also sent eight other injured people to hospitals.

“Everything is indicative of an isolated extreme weather event,” Nelson said of the investigation, calling the crash among the worst he’d seen in 24 years with the state. “What could people do? It really was just panic.”

The pileup was just west of Hardin, with additional ambulances called in from Billings to help. The identities of the dead and conditions of the survivors are not yet being released.

The crash was reported around 4:30 p.m., as 21 vehicles, including six commercial semitrucks, lost control in the dust storm that was fueled by gusts topping 100 km/h authorities said.

Nelson said there was zero visibility for a 1.6 kilometre stretch during a peak summer traffic hour for those commuting home from work or traveling for outdoor recreation.

It took more than six hours to fully reopen the road.

“We had a lot of debris and complete chaos,” Nelson said.

A video from the Billings Gazette showed hundreds of tractor-trailers, campers and cars backed up for kilometres along the two eastbound lanes of the interstate.

Before the pileup, storms popped up in central southern Montana between 1 and 2 p.m. and slowly began moving east, said Nick Vertz, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Billings. Those storms prompted a severe thunderstorm watch that covered Hardin and other parts of Montana.