Truck driver Mike Valentin of Shenandoah escaped from the Interstate 81 massive crash this week with a fractured hand, a chipped and fractured elbow, back injuries and bruises.

“I was working, coming out of Mechanicsburg, traveling on I-81 north,” he recalls. “Somewhere about a half mile to a mile, I started noticing snow. I had dropped my speed limit according to the GPS truck tracker from 67 miles an hour down to about 40 miles an hour.

“Before I got to the Minersville exit, where the accident was, I saw a blinker kind of in the horizontal area. I was watching, and it didn’t look right to me, so I started coming to a stop when I realized it was a truck sideways. I cut my wheel to the right hard, making a jackknife motion to try to hit the ramp or the median.

“As I was doing that, there was a black car that ended up smashing into the front of my cab. I got myself stopped before I hit the truck in front of me, then got hit on the rear driver’s side of my trailer by at least two or three tractor-trailers that could not come to a stop,” he said.

“I waited a few moments to where everything felt like it was done. I was shaking. I asked the people in the car that had hit me if they were OK. They seemed like they were a little bit of an older couple. They said they were OK. They were shook up.”

He got out of his tractor, an orange one with a ‘Schneider’ on it.

“I started to go toward the ramp, and right as I looked to the left I noticed the trucks were on fire. I started to try to cross the road quickly and almost got ran over by a wrecker that blew through. Everyone was going very fast.”

He has video footage from the scene.

“I tried to help a few other people out of their vehicles, and got some pictures and some videos of the scene. I was highly in shock and was just going on shock mode.” Valentin said.

He went to the hospital and was treated for injuries. The incident brought, “my kids and family through the scare of their life,” Valentin said.

“It was a very horrific scene, and from what people can see in videos or pictures that people have taken and posted, it looks like a bunch of people just running around acting crazy.

“But that’s not what was happening. A lot of people were trying to help other people get out of vehicles and making sure that people were OK.”

There was no warning, he said.

“It was a freak snow squall. It went from beautiful to zero visibility in the matter of seconds,” he said.

“I was fortunate enough to be able to avoid doing a heavy impact into the trailers in front of me, and I am thanking God for that. I consider myself very fortunate to have walked away with the injuries I have versus the alternative.

“The biggest thing for me is that people need to learn to slow down. Everybody’s got to get somewhere, and if you see some type of weather, slow yourself down 10 or 20 miles an hour. Give yourself the extra travel time so that you’re able to do that.

“It was crazy to watch the people slamming into these cars. I mean, I wasn’t in their vehicles and I don’t know how fast they were going, but my judgment is they were going a lot faster than I was.

“I hope everyone that was involved in the accident is OK, and I’m sorry for the losses that came out of the accident. I’m counting my blessings for sure,” he said.