6 Killed When Big Rig Loses Control on the 710
Six people were killed Thursday and six more injured when a tractor-trailer loaded with furniture crashed into a Toyota Corolla and then plowed through the center divider on the Long Beach Freeway at Olympic Boulevard, crushing a black Mercedes-Benz and causing a chain reaction that eventually involved seven vehicles.
As workers began the painstaking task of removing and identifying the bodies, California Highway Patrol officials and neighborhood activists renewed their calls for increased safety measures on the corridor. The Long Beach Freeway is infamously overcrowded and was not built to handle the 47,000 tractor-trailers that use it every day, hauling freight from nearby industrial towns and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Thursday's crash killed four occupants of the big-rig's cab, all employees of Rebel Van Lines, a family-owned moving company based in Compton, as well as the driver and a passenger in the Mercedes.
"In 23 years this is the most fatalities I've seen in one accident," said CHP Officer Jesse Cezares. "When I first got on the scene, I tried to see what was going on. We opened up the cab and started bringing out bodies, and I thought, 'Oh my God it's three -- now it's four
The Los Angeles County coroner's office identified four of the victims, without specifying which vehicle they were in. They are: Jeffrey Davis, 41; James Glasper, 39; James Hernandez, 48; and Jorge Manzur, 50.
Two years ago, the CHP identified the I-710 from the ports to the Santa Ana Freeway as one of the three most dangerous stretches in the state. Just last month, a tanker truck carrying 9,000 gallons of gasoline jackknifed and exploded on the freeway, killing the big rig's driver and forcing the evacuation of about 150 nearby residents.
Between January 1998 and April of this year, 913 people were injured in 3,140 truck accidents on that stretch of the freeway. Including Thursday's victims, at least 25 people have been killed in that period.
"We're very concerned about it," said CHP Assistant Chief Art Acevedo. For a time, Acevedo said, the CHP had a federal grant to step up enforcement of traffic infractions on the Long Beach Freeway, and that helped reduce fatalities. But that money has run out.
The worst part of the highway, Acevedo said, is the transition to the northbound Santa Ana Freeway, near where Thursday's accident occurred. That stretch was not built with the connector roads on the right-hand side like modern highways, so trucks must cross several lanes of traffic in order to merge onto the Santa Ana Freeway.
