40-car pileup on I-81 in Schuylkill county
Pottsville, Pa. — It would have been easy for the workers at a Wegmans distribution center in Pennsylvania to simply continue on with their day as an 80-car pileup unfolded nearby on Interstate 81.
But they didn’t.
About 25 employees at the grocery chain’s Pottsville warehouse ended up running a makeshift triage site and shelter for more than 50 victims of the crash. They gave them food, blankets, Band-Aids and ice packs.
They fed injured dogs and cats. Most of all, they listened and offered the survivors shoulders to cry on in a frightening moment.
“They were still in a lot of shock,” said Mark Mikita, asset protection manager at the Wegmans Pottsville site. “There were so many folks that were just grateful to be alive.”
The accident happened Monday morning when a snow squall struck the Pottsville area, about three hours south of Syracuse. The pileup left six people dead.
The highway was closed for nearly two days as authorities cleaned up the scene.
Wegmans workers began hearing sirens soon after the crash, Mikita said. The 1 million-square-foot distribution center, which employs 900 people, is about two miles from the accident scene.
Eventually, employees saw smoke billowing from the highway as some vehicles involved caught fire.
Local officials initially just asked Wegmans, headquartered in Rochester, to keep their own trucks on-site and off the highway. About 15 minutes later, the company got a call asking if responders could send some victims to the Wegmans center.
The staff didn’t hesitate.
“It really was the right thing to do,” said Mikita, who serves on a local emergency planning committee in the Pottsville area. “Ultimately, we’re committed to being good neighbors in the community.”
Wegmans workers greeted crash victims as they were bused to the distribution center. Employees used a lunchroom for the temporary shelter, Mikita said.
Buses transporting survivors of a pileup on Interstate 81 near Pottsville, Pennsylvania arrive at a Wegmans distribution center near the crash site. Wegmans workers set up a triage center and temporary shelter for the victims at the distribution center.Photo provided by Wegmans
One couple at the site was heading to New Hampshire after a stop in Camp Hill. They had been on the road for only an hour when the squall struck and they found themselves in the pileup.
Another family was traveling from Austin, Texas to Maine with two dogs and a U-Haul, Mikita said.
Victims were in the warehouse for five or six hours. Eventually, local EMTs and members of the Red Cross arrived to help.
The survivors were later taken to a local fire department.
Two of Wegmans’ own staff EMTs ended up helping first responders at the crash scene itself, Mikita said. When they realized what was going on, they grabbed their supply bags and left.
They ended up pulling multiple people from wrecked vehicles.
“They described it as a jigsaw puzzle,” Mikita said. “The cars were intertwined. They had to crawl under tractor-trailers. They just went from car to car.”
Employees simply wanted to help.
“It’s something you can’t prepare for. We could never prepare for,” Mikita said. “We worked as a team and tried to navigate a situation that we never expected.”
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