Witnessing the famous 1990 Tower Drive bridge crash

The terrible news today about three major traffic catastrophes in this country due to bad weather got me thinking about the day I was witness to a catastrophic accident in Green Bay, Wisconsin on the Leo Frigo bridge in March of 1990. It was called the Tower Drive bridge before they renamed it later. The changed namesake was actually a cofounder of the Frigo Cheese Company, the company I worked for in Lena.

We made regular deliveries of cheese to Northland Cold Storage, a facility that was located just off I-43 near the Atkinson Drive exit before crossing the Leo Frigo bridge. We generally arrived there around 7am to off load on a FCFS basis and I had planned my trip to get there about that time. It was only about 30 miles south of Lena and I noticed the fog really getting thick as I got within a couple miles of the exit I needed to take. The exit is immediately before the rise up onto the 1.5 mile long bridge over the Fox river which flows into the waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan.

The closer I got to the exit, the worse the visibility and I slowed down with traffic coming up and passing although I had seen much worse. I remember being relieved to be able to exit the freeway at Atkinson Dr. After getting off the interstate, I had to turn north and go under the bridge and then east and south to the warehouse.

Hours after the fog cleared

After my final turn and approaching the warehouse, I started hearing drivers yelling on the CB radio that there were cars crashing on the bridge. I pulled up to the staging area, got out of the truck and could hear vehicles crashing as I was standing there. Of course I could see nothing because of the limited visibility.

The bridge being about 2,000 feet north and overhead, the dense fog must have the perfect conditions to carry sound and it was horrifically loud to me, almost like I was in some kind of terrible dream. It actually went on for 4 or 5 minutes listening to crash after crash feeling helpless trying to think of anything I could do. I could actually hear people screaming and hollering up there! There was an explosion and I just remember this helpless feeling and deep sorrow. Hearing sirens in the background, I knew rescue was on the way, but I’ll never forget that feeling. The sound of those vehicles crashing while I stood there effected me for quite a while.

What happened was that there was a perfect accumulation of factory smoke combined with fog and wind direction that made a blinding wall of zero visibility across the interstate and three people died that morning along with thirty injured. 52 vehicles were involved.

In my 37 years of professional driving I've seen and experienced a lot, but that was one of the worst. Among one of the days that I will never forget. Please drive careful out there. Link to my book below, published in 2020:

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