Barrington native on way to Chicago suburbs to visit family caught in deadly Kansas dust storm pile up crash
A Barrington native who was on her way back to visit family in the suburbs said it's a miracle she and her partner survived being caught in a Kansas dust storm highway pileup involving more than 70 vehicles.
The incident happened Friday, as severe storms were ramping up throughout the Midwest and South.
Eight people died in the pileup, which involved both cars and semis. Video captured the aftermath on I-70 in northwest Kansas. The storm led to near-zero visibility.
Patty Dowd Schmitz and her partner Bob Rybak were caught right in the middle.
"The first big miracle thing, suddenly it kind of lightened up, in that like immediately we saw two semi trailer trucks dead stopped parallel with each other, on the highway, not 50 feet from us," she recounted. "You just knew you were going to hit them."
With that sliver of warning, Dowd Schmitz and Rybak were able to weave onto the shoulder without striking the trucks head-on.
"Within a few seconds, you felt this slam-bam behind you," she said. "The person had behind us had slammed directly into us. Two more seconds, another hit."
With her door jammed shut, Dowd Schmitz said she was scrambling to climb out the driver's side behind Rybak, who was able to grab their dog Ginger and get out.
"The third time it was a pickup truck that ended up literally upside down on top of us," she said. "It was horrible."
As cars continued to pile onto theirs, all they could do, Dowd Schmitz said, was survey the wreckage.
"We were wandering around the median of the highway with all these wrecked semi trucks all around us," she said.
Their Honda CRV was left mangled.
"It was like the apocalypse," said Dowd Schmitz. "The dust storm, 80 mile an hour winds, this granular dirt and dust from the Kansas farms just grinding into your skin and your eyes and ears. A blizzard type of wind."
She said a series of miracles kept them alive.
"We escaped really with just a few cuts and bruises, and so many other people around us, right in the area where our car was, died. And we later found out that the person that was in the pickup truck above us, he died," she said.
Dowd Schmitz said she asked the Kansas Highway Patrol about their decision to eventually get out of their car and they told her they did the right thing in this pile-up situation. Though it's generally recommended people stay inside their cars after an accident, in this case it may have saved their lives.
The interstate was finally cleared from debris and reopened in Kansas Monday morning.
