60 accidents reported on slick highways > Travelers face ice, fog on way home

Northern New England highways were littered with accidents and some flights were delayed as sleet and freezing rain surprised homebound travelers on Sunday’s close of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

In New Hampshire, state police said more than 30 accidents had been reported by early Sunday afternoon on black-ice-coated highways. Many of the accidents were on Interstates 93 and 95, and Route 89 in the western part of the state.

For plane passengers traveling out of Manchester Airport, some flights to New York were delayed, but spokesman Brian O’Neil said most of the day was trouble-free despite the weather.

In Maine, highways glazed over as a storm moved north Sunday morning. More than 60 accidents, some involving serious personal injuries, were reported on the Maine Turnpike, Interstate 295 and other major highways.

One of the more serious wrecks involved a dump truck and a car on U.S. Route 202 in Waterboro. Other cars flipped over after skidding on slick highways, said spokesman Stephen McCausland of the state Public Safety Department.

Maine State Police urged motorists to stay put until higher temperatures arrived as expected later in the day, which would change the freezing precipitation to rain. The turnpike speed limit was dropped to 45 mph.

Police and highway crews were kept busy responding to accidents and clearing roads throughout the eastern half of Vermont.

“I wouldn’t recommend traveling east of the Green Mountains,” said Ray Burke, who dispatches highway crews for Vermont’s transportation agency. “We’ve got cars off all over the place.”

In one accident, a Rutland city bus went off the road in Pittsfield and rolled over, police said. None of the three people on board was injured.

State police urged people to call Vermont’s hotline for winter road conditions: 1-800-ICYROAD, for updates before venturing out.

Burke said the western half of the state had temperatures in the upper 30s and rain. But from Waterbury south on Interstate 89, along much of Interstate 91 in the Connecticut River Valley and on back roads from south-central Vermont to the northeast, roads were treacherous.

Burke said precipitation that was falling as rain was often turning to ice when it hit road surfaces frozen by frigid temperatures in recent days.

On Saturday in Wells, the Maine Turnpike was backed up for two hours after a pickup truck crashed in the southbound lanes at Mile 13, state police said.

The truck struck a concrete construction barrier along the right lane, then rode along the edge of the barrier for 240 feet before rolling over three times and landing on its roof in the middle of the road, Trooper Bob Byron said.

The driver, Albert Moreau, 70, of Falmouth, was able to get out of the vehicle, but his wife Lorraine, 68, was trapped in the wreckage for about an hour. She was flown to Maine Medical Center for treatment of a head and possible neck injury that Byron said was not believed to be life threatening.

No other vehicles were involved in the crash, which caused southbound traffic to be diverted off the toll road at Exit 2.

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest periods of the year for travelers, and Sunday was expected to be the busiest day of the weekend on the Maine Turnpike. About 160,000 vehicles were expected to use the turnpike Sunday, officials said.