A 59-vehicle pileup on snowy Interstate 93 in Derry, N.H., sent a dozen people to hospitals Sunday morning while a fast-moving storm dumped up to a half-foot of snow in areas of Maine before moving out Sunday afternoon.
Derry Fire Battalion Chief Jack Webb said the most common injuries were broken ankles and legs, and none was life-threatening.
The crash occurred about 9 a.m. between Exits 3 and 4 in Derry and involved 46 cars, three buses, two tractor-trailers and eight trucks, Webb said.
It took emergency crews about an hour to remove one man from a car wedged under the back of a tractor-trailer, but the man suffered only minor injuries.
Witnesses told WMUR-TV that a charter bus carrying a group of Boy Scouts from Massachusetts was at the front of the crash and was trying to avoid another car that had gone out of control.
Another bus carrying the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s women’s hockey team also was involved. Some of the women held up a sign saying “We are OK” after the doors to the bus were blocked by crashed cars.
In Maine, the snow made for slippery driving and led to numerous parking bans Sunday and into this morning. There were numerous minor accidents and vehicles reported off the road throughout the state.
In Eddington, a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle at about 5:30 p.m. and taken by ambulance to a Bangor hospital, according to a Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher. No other information was available.
In Augusta, about a dozen vehicles were involved in accidents on Interstate 95, according to Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland. None appeared to involve life-threatening injuries.
State police also were investigating an accident in Falmouth, where a plow truck apparently hit a tollbooth on the turnpike’s southbound lane. The crash knocked the booth off its foundation and trapped the toll collector inside for several minutes, police said. She was not injured.
Snow tallies included 6½ inches in Scarborough and Southwest Harbor, 6 inches in Oxford and Kittery, and 4 inches in Lewiston and Ellsworth, according to the National Weather Service. Bangor received only about 2 inches.
Rich Norton, a weather service meteorologist in Caribou, said the next several days would have an unsettled weather pattern and very low temperatures. He said snow showers are possible for today, Wednesday and possibly Friday, but he did not predict any significant storms.