‘Very, very scary’: Driver recounts her experience in the 37-vehicle Glenn Highway pileup

PALMER — A day after she ended up part of a 37-car pileup in frigid fog on the Glenn Highway, Big Lake resident Shannon Rust Robertson was sore and emotionally tender but otherwise OK.

The pileup late Thursday morning on the southbound Knik River bridge, an area transited by thousands of weekday commuters, was the worst in recent memory.

Ambulances transported 13 people and another five people reported injuries of some kind, according to an updated tally provided Friday by Alaska State Troopers. It wasn’t clear how many, if any, remained hospitalized on Friday.

Troopers say they are still investigating exactly what triggered the chain-reaction wreck. No citations had been issued as of Friday, they said.

Robertson, 52, was headed to a housecleaning job in Eagle River in her 2020 Toyota Tacoma truck late Thursday morning.

In an interview Friday, she said she had slowed down to 30 mph when a banged-up SUV came into view — sideways, airbag deployed, and blocking both lanes in front of her.

“It was very, very scary. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life,” Robertson said Friday morning. “It made me question my decision to live here. Just for a slight moment. I’m like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

A dense, localized fog band formed by the moisture coming off nearby Knik Arm obscured the bridge, creating such poor visibility that drivers said they could barely see a car-length ahead. Temperatures in the area hovered just above 20 degrees below zero. Responders said the bridge was slicker than it looked.

A driver who passed the area just before the pileup began said he called 911 about a disabled pickup that posed a hazard, especially in such low visibility. A troopers spokesman said a vehicle slowing or braking started the domino effect of wrecks.

The pileup started with 10 or 12 vehicles, troopers spokesman Justin Freeman said in an email Friday. Then more vehicles started rear-ending one another as they tried to stop before hitting the growing pileup or nearby vehicles, Freeman said.

A traffic jam extended behind the tangle of mangled cars and pickups, along with a few semis. Photos show a chaotic scene of vehicles with flattened tires and hoods up, or doors and panels crumpled like aluminum foil against a chilled backdrop of frost-rimmed trees.

The aging, rutted bridges over the Knik River are scheduled for a major overhaul as soon as this summer, state transportation officials say. Plans call for replacing the worn concrete as well as the joints where the bridges connect with the highway, a sometimes tricky transition for drivers especially in icy conditions.

Robertson said she always slows down at the transition — “those bridges scare me” — but on Thursday slowed more than usual because of the fog, to 35 mph and then down to 30. She said she couldn’t see any vehicles ahead or behind her.

Traveling in the the left lane, she glimpsed a vehicle pulled over in the right lane. She remembers thinking that was a bad place to break down.

“I didn’t see the accident until it was like, a car-length away from me,” Robertson said.

She said the first thing she did when she saw the SUV sideways across the bridge was take her foot off the gas. Then she braked.

“And I just slid, slid right into them,” Robertson said. “They’d obviously been hit multiple times ... their airbag was already deployed before I hit them. I hit them and then someone slid into me.”

Robertson said she ended up toward the back of the pile, with six or eight vehicles behind her and about 30 ahead. She had a headache and some muscle stiffness but otherwise escaped injury.

Her airbag didn’t deploy but the Tacoma wasn’t drivable. A friend from Big Lake just happened to be driving the vehicle that hit her, and the women spent the next 2 1/2 hours sitting in that car to stay warm until traffic cleared.

With more cold weather in the forecast, troopers referenced Thursday’s pileup to urge drivers to slow down and provide extra room between vehicles, use headlights, and stay off the road if lights aren’t working properly as “these conditions make it very dangerous for people to see.”

Several patrol cars could be seen monitoring driver speed on the highway near the bridges on Friday.

“The weather conditions we had yesterday are still present today and are forecast to continue through next week,” Freeman said, when asked about the speed traps. “We will be taking proactive measures as a reminder for folks to slow down, maintain a greater distance between vehicles and drive with their headlights on.”

On Friday, Robertson’s truck sat in the yard at Wasilla’s Elite Towing. It was one of 11 vehicles the company said it hauled off the highway Thursday.

Numerous tow truck companies responded to the bridge Thursday, together with troopers and rescue and ambulance crews from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Chugiak Volunteer Fire and Rescue and the Anchorage Fire Department.

The highway was shut down in both directions for about an hour to give access to emergency vehicles and for under three hours southbound, with drivers routed around the bridges via the Old Glenn Highway.

Robertson said she got to warm up in an ambulance.

“I cannot say enough about the first responders,” she said Friday. “They were amazing.”