Several members of a Marietta church congregation died in Sunday’s fiery multicar pileup on I-75 in Florida.
Authorities in Florida have not yet released the names of the 10 people killed in the early-morning crash on a fog- and smoke-shrouded stretch of the interstate south of Gainesville, but Channel 2 Action News reported that the dead included Jose Carmo Jr., pastor of a Marietta Brazilian congregation, his wife, Adriana Carmo, and their daughter, Leticia Carmo.
An employee at Sprayberry High School told the AJC that Leticia Carmo was a junior at the Cobb County school, and that her younger sister, freshman Lidiane Carmo, was badly injured in the wreck.
The younger sibling was taken to Shands at the University of Florida hospital in Gainesville. Hospital spokeswoman Lindsey Robertson said Lidiane Carmo was in critical condition Monday morning.
Rosanna Alves, a family friend, told Channel 2 that two other church members also died in the crash.
All five of those killed were in a van that was involved in the crash. Alves told Channel 2 that the van's driver, Edsom Carmo, also died, along with his wife or girlfriend, Rose, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the van.
Jose and Adriana Carmo were in the second row of seats. Their daughters were also in the van.
The Sprayberry employee said that principal Ed Wagner met with the faculty Monday morning to tell them about the deaths.
Cobb schools spokesman Jay Dillon said that grief counselors were on hand, “in case any students need someone to talk to.”
Authorities in Florida, meanwhile, were trying to determine Monday what caused the horrific pileup, in which a long line of cars and trucks collided one after another on a dark highway so shrouded in haze and smoke that drivers were blinded.
All lanes of I-75 reopened late Sunday, but authorities closed the highway again early Monday due to poor visibility caused by fog and smoke.
Steven R. Camps and some friends were driving home hours before dawn Sunday when they were suddenly drawn into the massive wreck.
"You could hear cars hitting each other," he told the Associated Press. "People were crying. People were screaming. It was crazy," the Gainesville man said hours later. "If I could give you an idea of what it looked like, I would say it looked like the end of the world."
The interstate had been closed for a time before the accidents because of a mixture of fog and heavy smoke from a brush fire that may have been intentionally set. The decision to reopen it early Sunday will certainly be a focus of investigators, as will the question of how the fire started.
Alachua County Sheriff's Sgt. Todd Kelly told the Gainesville Sun that he received a page about midnight Saturday that U.S. 441 was closed because of an accident. Shortly after, he was notified that I-75 was closed at mile marker 376 north of Micanopy.
The Florida Highway Patrol reopened the highway a few hours later when conditions improved, the Sun reported.
“It was assessed. Conditions improved to a point where the road was reopened," highway patrol Lt. Patrick Riordan told the newspaper.
The National Transportation Safety Board is among the agencies that have sent investigators to the scene. The NTSB said it is assessing whether it wants to formally join the probe, which is being led by the Florida Highway Patrol.
The pileups happened around 3:45 a.m. Sunday on both sides of I-75. When rescuers first arrived, they could only listen for screams and moans because the poor visibility made it difficult to find victims in wreckage that was strewn for nearly a mile.
At least a dozen cars and six tractor-trailers were involved, and some burst into flames.
Hours later, twisted, burned-out vehicles were scattered across the pavement, with smoke still rising from the wreckage. Cars appeared to have smashed into the big rigs and, in one case, a motor home. Some cars were crushed beneath the heavier trucks.
Reporters who were allowed to view the site saw bodies still inside a burned-out Grand Prix. One tractor-trailer was burned down to its skeleton, charred pages of books and magazines in its cargo area. And the tires of every vehicle had burned away, leaving only steel belts.
Before Camps hit the fog bank, a friend who was driving ahead of him in a separate vehicle called to warn of the road conditions. The friend said he had just seen an accident and urged Camps to be careful as he approached the Paynes Prairie area, just south of Gainesville.
A short time later, Camps said, traffic stopped along the northbound lanes.
"You couldn't see anything. People were pulling off the road," he said.
The Associated Press and Gainesville Sun contributed to this article.
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