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The pileups were reported beginning about 12:45 p.m. Friday as intermittent, heavy wet snow continued to fall.

A Rock County 911 Communications Center supervisor said at about 1:30 p.m. that the Wisconsin State Patrol was shutting down all lanes on I-39/90 in both directions and diverting traffic as crews responded to a scene that involved as many as 20 vehicles, including at least one semitrailer truck on fire.

Heading back from Jefferson County to Elgin with two SUVs loaded on a trailer hitched to his Dodge Ram pickup truck, Lopez suddenly found his pickup racing toward a wall of jack-knifed semitrailer trucks on both sides of the highway.

Lopez said he slammed on his brakes and had to veer off the road and down a hillside bordered by a fence to avoid slamming into the pileup that was growing before his eyes.

His truck took out a snow fence, but otherwise was undamaged, although he said he ramped “three or four feet� into the air as he veered off the highway.

The crashes caused an untold number of injuries and left traffic backed up for miles, with dozens of motorists stranded along the interstate for hours. 

Emergency crews worked to evacuate people and then to tow away mangled semitrailer trucks and vehicles that had crashed and in some cases had careened off the road and down overpass hillsides. Tanker trucks were being called to the scene, and UTVs were being brought in to reach crash victims. 

The city of Janesville sent a city bus as a warming vehicle for those involved, who were able to walk away from the crash scene. 

Emergency radio dispatches indicated at about 1:30 p.m. that “walking wounded� were making their way along the side of the snowy highway on the northbound and southbound lanes near Avalon Road.

Those more seriously injured were transported to SSM Health St. Mary's hospital in Janesville and Mercyhealth Hospital and Trauma Center in Janesville. Emergency radio traffic indicated efforts were underway to extricate multiple seriously-injured people from vehicles. 

Emergency responders said over radio dispatches they were evacuating multiple people with "yellow-level," or "moderate to serious" injuries.

A spokeswoman at Mercyhealth Hospital said that as of 4:30 p.m. it had received 22 patients from the crash scene. She did not immediately know the extent of their injuries.

Gazette reporters at the scene observed multiple vehicles wedged underneath jack-knifed semitrailers. At least one of those vehicles had caught fire.

Reporters observed people walking through adjacent fields away from the crash site, while others with minor damage to vehicles were able to drive away and take side-road detours.

Lopez, who stood in the embankment near where he crashed, smiling and uninjured late Friday afternoon, was one of many people who likely still had hours to wait for a towing crew to remove their vehicles. He said the SUVs he was hauling were intact despite his off-road experience.

“ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ something that you kind of see on the news in other states, so you don’t think itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ going to happen (here), we’re Midwestern, you know?â€� he said. 

Lopez pointed to his truck and said he considered himself lucky.

“It could have been way worse. All this stuff is material stuff. God is big, and he was here for sure.�

Lopez said the crash, an apparent chain-reaction that started just south of where his truck ended up, was triggered in part by poor visibility.

Wind on Friday afternoon was blowing snow in sheets across roadways south of Janesville, causing many slide-off accidents on side roads near where the interstate crashes occurred.

A Wisconsin Department of Transportation traffic camera at I-39/90 south of Woodman Road showed at 2 p.m. traffic lanes filled with emergency vehicles, semis and other vehicles involved in the crash. 

It wasn’t clear how many total vehicles and how many crashes authorities were dealing with, but the Rock County 911 supervisor said a rapid succession of vehicle crashes and slide-offs were being reported on I90/39 stretching from the state line north to the Rock River bridge at Newville. About 1:45 p.m., interstate traffic was at a standstill from Highway 81 near Beloit north to Avalon Road, emergency radio communications indicated.

In an alert about 1:20 p.m., posted on , the Wisconsin Department of Transportation said the southbound lanes of I-39/90 South were closed at Highway 11/Avalon Road. Southbound interstate traffic was being diverted to Highway 11, then proceeding to Highway G, Highway BT, Highway S, and back to the interstate, around the accident. 

Emergency radio traffic indicated about 2:20 p.m. that additional assistance was being requested with traffic control in the Avalon Road area. 

Northbound 1-39/90 was also closed beyond Highway S/Shopiere Road, according to a DOT alert. Northbound traffic was being diverted to Highway S and then proceeding to Highways BT, B, and G, Highway 11 and back to the interstate, around the accident. 

A Gazette reporter on the scene at about 2:45 p.m., at a local road that goes under the interstate, East LT Townline Road, saw multiple ambulances leaving the scene appearing to be transporting crash victims to area hospitals. 

On the interstate, multiple cars and trucks were still in the ditch and multiple semis appeared to have crashed into each other and into other vehicles, a reporter observed.

At about 3:30 p.m., a reporter on the scene counted at least 10 tow trucks working to remove wrecked vehicles over about a quarter-mile stretch of the interstate north of Philhower Road and south of East LT Townline Road.

Meanwhile, over about a 50-yard stretch on the interstate there, a reporter counted 21 wrecked vehicles, including multiple jack-knifed and otherwise wrecked semi-trailers, and some vehicles wedged underneath semi-trailers.

Some vehicles had slid down a snowy embankment, crashing through a snow fence and into an adjacent  field.