Overturned Big Rig Pins Mercedes on 210 Freeway, Injuring Three

An oversized load flipped a big rig onto its side on the westbound 210 Freeway in La Crescenta on the morning of Wednesday, August 19, and the trailer came down on top of a grey Mercedes sedan, trapping the car underneath.

Three people were hurt and taken to hospitals, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. The wreck happened just before 11 a.m. near Pennsylvania Avenue and involved two semitrucks plus the passenger car.

By the time crews finished the cleanup, the westbound side of the freeway had been shut for more than 14 hours.

A Trailer Came Down on a Grey Mercedes

The white tractor-trailer was hauling an oversized load when it tipped, and the trailer landed on the grey Mercedes and pinned the sedan to the pavement.

Boxes and cargo flew across the lanes when the rig went over. Footage from the scene showed two badly mangled trucks and freight spread out over the roadway, where drivers would normally be doing 65.

Firefighters worked through each vehicle at the scene. All three of the injured went to local hospitals, and their conditions were not released.

CHP has not said what caused the collision. The investigation is still open.

More Than 14 Hours to Reopen

The westbound lanes stayed closed for the rest of Wednesday and through the night. CHP finally reopened everything around 1 a.m. Thursday.

That is a brutal stretch for a busy freeway to sit dark, and the reason was the sheer volume of stuff on the road. Crews had two wrecked semitrucks to drag off, a car wedged under a trailer to free, and a wide field of spilled freight to sweep up before it was safe to drive through.

Every piece of that had to happen in order. You cannot tow a truck sitting on a car, and you cannot open a lane covered in boxes. Multiple agencies worked the scene at once and it still ate the entire day.

One of the Rigs Caught Fire

Fire broke out on one of the big rigs, NBC Los Angeles reported, which added a whole step to the response.

Los Angeles County Fire crews worked the scene while CHP ran traffic control and started the investigation.

Put a fire, a trapped driver, an overturned trailer, and a scattered load in one place and you have a scene that needs firefighters, tow operators, and investigators all standing on the same slab of concrete. That is why it took so long.

Where All the Traffic Went

With every westbound lane blocked, CHP officers first squeezed some cars through the center median to keep a trickle moving. By mid-afternoon, that was not cutting it, and westbound drivers on the 210 were being pushed onto the southbound 2 Freeway.

Anyone who drives the Crescenta Valley knows the local streets are not built to absorb a whole freeway's worth of cars. Off-ramps backed up, side roads clogged, and the usual detours filled fast.

CHP marked the whole thing with a SigAlert. That term covers any unplanned event that closes a lane of traffic for 30 minutes or more, and a crash that closed the entire westbound side cleared that bar without trouble.

Two Big Rig Messes, Same Freeway, Same Morning

The La Crescenta wreck was not the only headache on the westbound 210 that morning. Shortly after 9 a.m., near Sunland Boulevard, a separate big rig caught fire and the flames spread into the hillside brush, setting off a SigAlert of its own.

The two incidents had nothing to do with each other. They just happened to hit the same corridor within a couple of hours, and crews ended up working both at the same time.

For commuters, that meant the entire Crescenta Valley was choked for most of the morning. One fire spilling onto a mountainside, one overturned trailer with a car under it, and a lot of people staring at brake lights wondering why nothing was moving.

This Stretch Has Seen It Before

The interchange near Pennsylvania Avenue has a rough history with trucks. It sits on the Foothill Freeway, a key freight route running between the San Fernando Valley and the Inland Empire, so heavy commercial traffic moves through it all day.

In December 2013, two big rigs collided about a mile up the road, just east of Lowell Boulevard, setting one truck on fire and closing the westbound lanes overnight. In August 2020, a wrong-way head-on crash near Ocean View Boulevard killed two people and shut the eastbound side.

The cause of Wednesday's crash is still under investigation, and CHP has not pointed to any single factor.

A Car Under a Trailer, Two Days Earlier

Two days before the La Crescenta pileup, another driver ended up trapped under a semitruck a few miles away. On Monday afternoon, a black Audi SUV slammed into the back of a big rig parked on the shoulder of the northbound 5 Freeway in Sylmar.

The hit was hard enough that the rear corner of the trailer punched through the SUV's windshield. One person was trapped inside and had to be pulled out. The driver was taken to hospital, with crews at the scene describing the injuries as critical.

CHP said the SUV appeared to be driving on the right shoulder when it struck the parked truck. The crash hit around 2:25 p.m. at Roxford Street, and it snarled traffic across the 5, the 405 transition, and back up toward the 118, with cars stacked for miles.

Two crashes, two days apart, both ending with a passenger vehicle jammed underneath a commercial trailer. That is the plain danger of sharing the road with 40 tons of steel and freight. When a big rig goes down or a car goes under one, the small vehicle loses every time.

For now, the 210 through La Crescenta is open again, and CHP is still working to figure out how a loaded tractor-trailer ended up on its side across the westbound lanes on a Wednesday morning.