51 Vehicles Collide In I-93 Pileup

DERRY, N.H. -- Dozens of vehicles collided on Interstate 93 in Derry, injuring nearly 100 people and shutting down the northbound lanes for hours Sunday.

"Once we were stopped, it just kept on happening -- you just heard crash, after crash, people screaming and yelling," said Jerry Siegel, of Wilmington, Mass. "Then, you just heard, 'Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.''

Witnesses said a bus filled with Boy Scouts from Massachusetts tried to avoid a car stopped on the highway. When the bus slowed, drivers behind it started sliding at nearly 50 mph. Snow was seen on the highway, but officials did not immediately identify a cause.

Derry fire officials said 46 cars, three buses and two tractor-trailers were involved in the Sunday morning crash between exits 3 and 4. The northbound lanes remained closed for about five hours as crews cleared the wreckage, reopening the interstate at about 1:30 p.m.

WMUR News 9's Aaron Kellogg reported that another bus transporting the University of Massachusetts women's hockey team was also involved in the crash. Some of the women inside the bus wrote on a dry-erase board "We are OK" as a car blocked the door of the bus, preventing anyone from getting out.

"I was sleeping and heard this girl say, 'We're going to hit someone," said Whitney Fraleigh, who was aboard the UMass bus. "I just heard a bunch of booms and figured we just crushed a bunch of cars."

"It looks like a movie scene, really. It's unbelievable," said Steve Dukeman, of Westwood, Mass. "People are hurt, some of the hurt people came off and got on our bus, and now they're using our bus as a staging area to get the emergency equipment in here."

Traffic backed up for miles as crews tried to locate and remove injured people. At least one man had to be pulled from his vehicle after it slid under a tractor-trailer. A school bus helped transport people off the highway, Kellogg reported.