I-55 dust storm crash: Read the Tribune investigation

The busy I-55 stretch between St. Louis and Springfield had seemed normal on May 1. But then a wall of dirt 200 feet high engulfed the interstate.

“All of a sudden it got thick and dark,” remembered Jim Dawson, a 67-year-old who had been driving to make funeral arrangements for his brother. “And boom, it was over.”

The 84-vehicle pileup that followed killed eight and injured at least 36 others. As a clearer understanding of the devastating crash emerges, survivors recount the dense dust, burning cars and repeated collisions that filled the “hellish episode.”

And family members remember the loved ones killed in the crash — a couple who led a campground, a veteran trucker, a barbershop quartet singer and others.

Illinois’ farming practices have come into sharper focus since May 1. Some called what happened that morning a “perfect storm,” unprecedented in its size, its staying power and the carnage it caused. Others say the state and federal governments have fallen short in helping farmers take on the types of conservation practices that could prevent another deadly dust storm.

“We can’t expect farmers to do all of this alone,” said Liz Moran Stelk, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Stewardship Alliance. “We have programs since the Dust Bowl that are supposed to invest in protecting soil and water, and they have not been prioritized.”

Read the three-part series below:

Part 1: The ‘hellish’ minutes scores of drivers spent battling a 200-foot wall of farm soil

By all accounts, Monday, May 1, started as a beautiful morning. Clear skies. Cool. The gusting wind out of the northwest, not uncommon for a central Illinois landscape covered by vast farm fields and little else, was the only sign of what was to come.

Around 10:50 a.m., Jim and Pam Dawson were about 30 miles from their home in Hillsboro, heading north on Interstate 55 to a Springfield funeral home to make arrangements for Jim’s brother, who died two days earlier from a massive stroke.

In a nearby car, Jane Flanders was on the first leg of an eight-hour trip back to suburban Minneapolis after a weekend spent with her niece’s family in Mount Olive.

Across the grassy median, Cambria Underwood was 5 miles from the Farmersville exit, where she was due to drop off a 3-year-old boy at her mom’s home day care.

Dozens of other drivers zipped along the busy stretch of interstate connecting St. Louis and Springfield.

“All of a sudden it got thick and dark,” Jim Dawson, 67, remembered. “And boom, it was over.”

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Part 2: The dust storm crash took lives, shattered families. Here are some of their stories.

In all, 84 cars and trucks were caught in the May 1 pileup along I-55 in central Illinois, about 20 miles south of Springfield. Investigators believe the series of crashes started when high winds picked up soil from recently planted farm fields, creating a blinding dust storm that instantly engulfed the busy interstate.

Eight people died from injuries suffered in the crash. In the weeks that followed, the Tribune spoke with family members of all but one of the eight fatal victims (relatives of Otto Medina-Salazar, 58, of Carthage, Missouri, could not be located).

These are their stories.

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Part 3: Fatal I-55 dust storm crash puts focus on Illinois farmers

To the untrained eye, Richard Lyons’ farm looks messy. There are no uniform rows of green against a bare canvas of brown soil. Instead, soybean sprouts, 6 inches tall, spring up through patches of decaying corn stalks and blades of dead cereal rye.

But that’s exactly the way Lyons planned it.

The techniques on display at his 300-acre family farm have been honed over a half-century of experience, 32 years of which were also spent in college classrooms teaching the state’s farmers. He says they’ve kept his soil fertile, his crop yields high.

And, he says, walking his central Illinois farm on a warm and windy Wednesday in May, they could prevent what happened on the interstate a week earlier.

“That’s good, healthy soil,” Lyons, 77, said, grabbing a handful of dark brown dirt. “This stuff doesn’t blow.”

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