Sandwiched Between Trucks, Oregon- On Saturday, a 26-vehicle pileup occurred on Interstate 84 outside Baker City, Oregon, about 130 miles northwest of Boise, Idaho shortly before 5 a.m.. A truck driver named Kaleb Whitby was sandwiched between trucks. Oregon interstate was icy and foggy at the time, and despite the harrowing experience of plowing into the back of a semi truck after flipping his own pickup, Whitby survived.
Whitby's real horror wasn't when his own truck flipped. It was the sight of another tractor-trailer zooming straight toward him, resulting in him being sandwiched between trucks in Oregon.
"When I saw those lights coming, I knew he was going to hit me," said Whitby. "And then I closed my eyes and prayed that everything turned out OK. That was all I could do."
As the truck loomed, he said that he gripped the steering wheel of his pickup tightly as the looming semi smashed through his pickup, and crushed it.
"It was just metal crunching and glass. It was just all fast and loud," he told CNN's "New Day."
"When the second truck hit my back end, it spun my bed underneath the first trailer that I hit and continued to swing my nose around, and I guess put my nose underneath the second trailer," he said.
"And as that trailer came around, it just kind of pushed me down and further into that -- that small V where you can actually see both the trailers within arm's reach on both sides," added the 27-year-old dad of his experience of being sandwiched between trucks, Oregon."And so if they would've pushed me even a foot, it would have crushed me."
Whitby said that he was a man of faith, which he believed was one of the reasons he survived despite being sandwiched between trucks in Oregon.
"I do believe, and I'm very firm in that, and I just held on to the wheel as tight as I could, tucked my head and just kept praying the whole time. After he hit, I just hoped that it would be over with soon," said Whitby.
After letting the sound of traffic subside "to make sure things were OK," he said he tried wiggling out then passers-by came to help him out from being sandwiched between trucks in Oregon.
"One guy pulled my feet out just enough so I could slide out of the car," he said of the experience.
After the entire traumatic ordeal, Whitby was left with nothing but a bruise on his left eyebrow and a few scratches on his right hand, CNN reports.
He told "New Day" that he thanked God for his survival after being sandwiched between trucks in Oregon.
"I don't have the answers, and if I did, I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. When things like that happen, and what I've kinda come to realize, is that it is a miracle and that I need to take that into my life and remember it, and now I need to figure out who I need to be in this life and what I need to accomplish," he said.
"Because how many people don't get the chance -- a second chance -- at escaping a situation like that?"
The 27-year-old had been trapped for about 30 minutes, and the scene was reportedly captured by a photographer whose own truck became disabled in the pileup.
"Thank God that I'm still alive," Washington state resident Whitby told OregonLive.com. "Now I've got to go figure out why."
The freeway pileup was believed to be cause by black ice. The accident reportedly involved more than a dozen tractor-trailers, leaving 12 people injured. They were initially treated at Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Baker City, according to The Oregonian. Those listed in critical condition and most severely injured by the pileup was transferred to OHSU Hospital in Portland.
Meanwhile, six others remained hospitalized Saturday afternoon, two of which were already in stable condition in Baker City, and four transferred to a sister hospital in Boise with more serious injuries, according to Oregon State Police Sgt. Kyle Hove.
While police said there were no fatalities, Whitby's survival after being sandwiched between trucks in Oregon is still a miracle.
The pileup left a long stretch of Interstate 84 closed during the day of the accident while crews tried to clean spilled diesel fuel whilst also clearing away dozens of stranded and damaged vehicles, reports the Associated Press.
"This is the biggest crash I have seen in a while," said Hove said. "It was extremely slick out there. One semi that spun around on the black ice started the chain reaction."
"It's surprising no one died in this," he added.
More than 100 people reportedly got involved in the Saturday morning pileup. After the crash which had Whitby sandwiched between trucks in Oregon, authorities updated their report hours after and increased the number of vehicles involved from 20 to 26, and the pileup reportedly left 50 to 70 vehicles stranded as well.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
