GULL LAKE, Minn. – A sudden white-out on a narrow stretch of road that separates Gull Lake and Hole-in-the-Day Bay caused a multi-vehicle pile-up 12 north of Brainerd. Three people were injured. First-responders used Jaws of Life tools to cut two people out of their vehicles. Among the crashed vehicles: Three semi-trailer trucks. Fifteen people were transported in school buses to the fire hall in nearby Nisswa to warm up. The crash waso n Highway 371, a 110-mile link between Little Falls north through Brainerd to Cass Lake. The road was expected to be closed all day. The crashes began about 11:50 a.m. Jack Peterson of Brainerd called it a “solid white-out” as he came around the Hole-in-the-Day Bay corner. “I saw it coming across the lake. I started to hit my brakes and then everything disappeared,” he told the Brainerd Dispatch.
Hundreds stranded. In blizzards in north and western Minnesota. Police assisted motorists who were off the road and called tow trucks to clear rights-of-way and winch cars out of barrow pits.
A Gull Lake horror story
Aaron Baseman, who lives near Hole-in-the-Day Bay, gave this account to the Brainerd Dispatch: Earlier he had driven through a short expanse of blowing snow where Gull Lake creates an opening in the trees. Vehicles slowed down and were through the space quickly. “It didn’t seem too bad,” he said. Past the lake the roads were clear, he said. On the way back home he slowed his pickup in anticipation of the blowing snow. He saw another car nearly stopped in traffic and he thought: “Don’t do that. Don’t stop in these conditions, Keep moving and just watch for what’s in front.” Then, just in front of hm, he saw a semi-truck with another truck crushed underneath. “I had to react in like a split second,” Baseman said. “And I started sliding sideways. I was about ready to plow into those trucks so I floored my truck and went into the center median and buried it in there and then after that I heard crash and bang and crash and bang behind me.” Outside his windows, he at times could see nearby vehicles. Mostly though the blowing snow left him entirely isolated in complete whiteout. “Incredible,” he said later. With his truck buried in the median, he watched other drivers slow for conditions and to gawk. But then more cars spun around in front of him, and he haad a new worry — vehicles slamming into him from behind. Besides crashing vehicles there was the unrelenting howl of the wind. “It sounded like a train and it was just a big howl — just unreal.” He watched as a first responder, still in her regular clothes, rushed to a vehicle crushed under the semitrailer 10 feet away. The first responder got the door open and pulled the airbag aside to reveal an injured person. In another car saw a woman and two children being carried to an ambulance. The elements sere brutal, Baseman said. First responders had to deal with crusty ice and snow. He likened them to machines; “They were going to everybody and checking on everybody, and they were being as efficient as they could.” Through it all, his pickup’s heater remained running. First-responders checked him several times as they went vehicle to vehicle. Then they came back and took him to a school bus for to decompress at the nearby Nisswa firehall.