One person lost their life and at least six others were injured after 24 vehicles slammed into each other due to extremely dense fog, on the Yamuna Expressway outside of Delhi.
According to NDTV, Indian authorities were forced to declare a public health emergency after the air quality index (measuring the concentration of toxic particulate matter in the air) shot up to 451.
To put that into perspective, health experts say that particulate matter in the air shouldn’t go above 100, and that the scale doesn’t even extend past 500 – this should give you an idea how bad of a situation this is.
Traffic was obviously impacted as well, as this rather scary pile-up occurred Wednesday morning at around 6:30 AM, near milestone 125.
“One person was killed and six people were injured. All the injured have been sent to district government hospital for treatment. The deceased is yet to be identified,” said officer Alok Dubey.
“The trigger of the accident was a defunct car which was rammed from behind by a speeding truck. The truck was ferrying apple cartons and it turned turtle after the collision. Since it was a heavily dense morning, over a dozen cars and heavy trucks kept on piling up on each other in a back-to-back collision,” added station officer G P Singh.
The police and expressway personnel managed to clear the road by removing the damaged vehicles with the help of a crane, reports Times of India.