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Two kilometres of carnage

A stretch of Highway 401 near Windsor turned into a disaster area on DETROIT Lake St Clair 5 km
THE HOT ZONE
the morning of Sept. 3, 1999, when eight people were killed and 14 cars and 5 tractor-trailers were crumpled together

MANNING RD.
dozens injured in a series of collisions involving 87 vehicles. WINDSOR and engulfed in flames in what emergency crews
2
HOW IT STARTED called the hot zone. Six people died in this area.
The accident was blamed largely on a sudden invasion of industrial Several survivors tried desperately to save the life
Crash site of a teenage girl who was trapped the wreckage. “I’m
fog, which formed when minute particles of industrial pollution began 401
adhering to droplets of moisture in the hot, humid air. only 14,” she cried. Her father and brother also died.

Smashed eastbound truck 2 km INDUSTRIAL FOG Four-car pileup behind Car wedged under truck
from the so-called hot zone jackknifed truck
NOT TO SCALE BRIAN HUGHES/TORONTO STAR

Reliving the horror of the 401 fog

DAN ROBSON
STAFF REPORTER
The morning sky was clear blue, but
patches of fog lingered.
Ute Lawrence and her husband
cruised along the 401 from their
home in London, toward Windsor,
their silver Mercedes coupe slicing
through bouts of fog scattered
along the four-lane highway.
They passed cars, vans, and trucks
carrying other mothers, fathers,
sisters and brothers.
“Suddenly we entered this wall of
fog that so thick that we couldn’t
see a thing,” Lawrence says.
“Then all hell broke loose.”
THE MCLAMORE family was on the
road that day, too.
Marceya McLamore, 14, and her
brother Mark, 15, from Rochester,
were travelling with their father
and his girlfriend. In a Buick Le-
Sabre, rolling west on the 401, they
disappeared into the cloud.
Only one would survive.
10 YEARS LATER: When 87 vehicles piled up near Windsor and burst “I remember feeling very guilty
that I survived, and she didn’t,” she
into flames on Sept. 3, 1999, 8 died, and many remain traumatized says. “Here we are, a middle-aged
couple, and here’s a little 14-year-
old girl. . . . she was engulfed in
flames, screaming ‘I’m only 14.’ ”
Lawrence and Fisher, scarred by
the events, had to drink themselves
to sleep for months. She couldn’t
leave that day behind; a few years
ago, Lawrence was diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder.
She wrote a book about her expe-
rience, called The Power of Trauma,
and speaks widely about emotional
recovery. She knows stories of the
people who haven’t been able to
pull themselves out of the greyness,
suffering failed relationships, alco-
holism and depression.
“Each and every one of them in
that hot-zone area, I know, has suf-
fered unbelievably,” she says.
Last year Lawrence and her hus-
band drove back along the 401 to
Windsor for the first time. She
hasn’t returned since.

THERE WAS NO fog in the forecast
for Essex County on Friday, Sept. 3,
1999.
A malfunction at the Windsor Air-
port Observation Station with the
dew cell, used to detect whether va-
pour is likely to stay in the air and
create fog, was not uncovered until
later.
Earlier in the morning, the OPP
had responded to an accident relat-
ed to fog. No warnings were issued.
Drivers navigated through small
puffs of cloud, not knowing the
largest pileup in Canadian history
was about to swallow them.
KIRK WALSTEDT HEARD the
squealing tires and smashing metal
from his farmhouse. He heard the
screams.
He raced in his pickup across the
field to the highway, which was cov-
ered in a dark cloud, swallowing the
cars and trucks still driving into it.
“You could hear what was going
on, but you couldn’t see anything,”
he says. “It was like walking
through a door into a room.”
Walstedt stepped inside.
CORY MCCRINDLE was dropping
his son off at preschool, when his
cellphone rang. It was the CBC; he
was the morning reporter.
“There’s been an accident.”
He cut through kilometres of grey
Stan Fisher and wife Ute Lawrence, near a London on-ramp, remain emotionally scarred by what they heard
and saw in the 1999 crash. It took them nine years before they travelled back on the route to Windsor.
fog on the 401 as it drifted west,
away from the carnage it created.
“I’ve got to get to this story, what-
ever it is, ” he remembers thinking.
“I grabbed the video camera, and
rolled it.”
UTE LAWRENCE AND her hus-
band, Stan Fisher, were trapped in-
side their crushed sports car, a van
on top of them and a transport
truck leaning beside. Vehicles kept
piling in from behind.
“They were like angry waves,” she
says. “With each jolt we thought
that was the one that would kill us.”
Then Lawrence heard banging on
their roof, and a girl’s piercing
scream. “Help me! Get me out of
here!” — Marceya McLamore
pleaded for her life.
Her brother and father were al-
ready dead. Her father’s girlfriend,
Sheila Gayle, survived with a bro-
ken back and fractured left leg.
Marceya escaped the car, but in
the madness of the growing infer-
no, she was pinned between the
sports car and a van.
“I’m only 14,” she cried.
Walstedt remembers her. There
with his brother, Scott, they pulled
people to safety and tried to put out
fires. About a dozen people stepped
through the fog with them.
“We helped as many as we could,”
he says. In the face of blazing fire
and explosions, they managed to
rescue at least a dozen people.
“There was a young girl we
couldn’t get out,” Walstedt says,
softly. “She was crying for us to get
her out, and we couldn’t.”
IT WAS MARCEYA’S dying cries
that led an unknown man to Law-
rence and Fisher.
“I know that this little girl saved
our lives,” Lawrence says.
The young man smashed in their
windshield, wedged up the roof,
freeing Fisher and Lawrence.
Flames enveloped them. Then, try-
ing to save Marceya, he lifted and
lifted and lifted — “until his face got
burned,” Lawrence says.
There was nothing they could do.
MCCRINDLE WATCHED the car-
nage through the viewfinder of his
CRAIG GLOVER FOR THE TORONTO STAR
camera. “It put a distance between
me and what was going on,” he says.
As explosions blasted around like a
battlefield, he filmed the fire that
killed Marceya. “This is what I have
to do,” he thought.
A passing man, pale and shaking,
told the camera he had tried to save
the girl, but couldn’t.
“There was, for better or worse, a
story to be told. There were peo-
ple’s lives that were lost,” McCrin-
dle says. “It was a story that people
needed to know.”
LATER, WHEN THE FOG lifted,
charred wreckage was scattered
across a two-kilometre stretch of
the 401, near Manning Rd., just east
of Windsor.
People had fled the mist into the
nearby fields. Some just ran, as far
from hell as they could. More than
40 were injured; seven died at the
scene and another later in hospital.
The 87 vehicles involved were a
mass of crumpled metal.
IN THE MONTHS that followed,
Lawrence went numb inside.
THE DEADLY FOG HAUNTS Wal-
stedt, too.
When the Essex County lawyer
watches action movies, or hears
loud, sudden noises, he’s taken
back to that horrific day.
A cross memorial sits on his prop-
erty, near the highway, placed by
the family of one the victims.
His voice breaks as he remembers.
“It’s been 10 years, but when you
get talking about it you still get as
emotional as you did that day.”
MCCRINDLE’S IMAGES were
transported into our living rooms.
We witnessed hell through his
viewfinder.
“I’d never seen that kind of car-
nage,” he says.
He described the scene like a bat-
tlefield: “With bombs going off —
everything was laid waste.”
Days later, the gravity of the crash
finally hit him. “Sept. 3 is my Sept. 11
in some ways,” he says. “How can
you forget it?”
THE CRASH TOOK the lives of eight
people — Marceya McLamore,
Mark McLamore, Charles McLa-
more Jr., Eleanor Shognosh, Bob
LaForme, Randy Spotton, Wade
Brown, and Anne Marie Strnisa.
It was Friday, Sept. 3, 1999. A clear,
blue-sky morning — but patches of
fog linger, still.

IMPROVEMENTS MADE TO ‘CARNAGE ALLEY’

The stretch of Highway 401 between London
and Windsor, known as Carnage Alley, looks
much different today than it did on Sept. 3,
1999.
At the time of the accident, the highway ap-
peared like it did in the 1960s — two lanes in
both directions with a grass median.
But public outrage over the 87-vehicle pile-
up prompted the then minister of transporta-
tion, David Turnbull, to later that month an-
nounce a plan for safer roads. Ontario’s chief
coroner also called for an inquest.
A $322 million plan to revitalize Carnage Al-
ley began in 2004. The highway is now wid-
ened to three lanes in both directions with
paved shoulders added on both sides, with
rumble strips. A concrete median separates
traffic in both directions.
Construction began in the area where the
accident occurred, near Manning Rd., just
east of Windsor, in 2005.
By next year, the six-phase project will be
complete, says Jennifer Graham Harkness,
the Ministry of Transportation operations en-
gineer overseeing the construction.
However, it’s difficult to say whether these
changes would have made any difference of
the morning of Sept. 3, 1999.
“Fog will always have an impact to drivers,
so there is a need to be safe when you’re driv-
ing,” says Graham Harkness, noting their
plans provide more space for drivers and will
prevent most cross-median crashes. So far,
statistics suggest something is working.
From 1996 to 1999, the Ministry of Trans-
portation recorded 552 collisions with inju-
ries on the 401 between London and Windsor.
That dropped to 330 between 2000 and
2003. Between 2004 and 2006 it fell to 216.
“A lot of the numbers may not be represen-
tative,” says Graham Harkness. Construction
in the area has likely had an effect on those
numbers.
Today, methods to detect fog are similar to
those used in 1999 but with some key im-
provements, says Geoff Coulson of Environ-
ment Canada.
Satellites are still used to identify low-lying
clouds. But since 2003, OPP officers have di-
rect links to Environment Canada from their
cruisers, where they report weather condi-
tions from the ground. This helps weather
stations assess the severity of the conditions.
Webcams and the Internet also allow severe
weather alerts to get out more quickly.
Dan Robson
ROLEX • PATEK • CARTIER
DIAMONDS
BUY • SELL • TRADE
VAN RIJK 416-440-0123 www.vanrijk.com