A massive pileup involving more than 130 vehicles on an icy Texas

 massive winter crash involving more than 130 vehicles on the Ice Texas interstate.

                                    

A crumbled car is towed as emergency crews work to clear the mass casualty pile-up on I-35W and Northside Drive in Fort Worth. (Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

                          

                                   

                                    

At least six people have been killed and at least 12 others injured in a massive winter crash involving more than 130 vehicles on the Ice Texas interstate.

  This extreme accident occurred on Interstate 35, near downtown Fort Worth.

                                 

  Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis said, ‘There were multiple people who were trapped within the boundaries of their vehicles and were successfully rescued. 

                                     

 Hydraulic rescue equipment was needed, ”said Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis.

                                 

 At least 65 people were hospitalized, 36 of whom were rescued by ambulance from the crash site, several of them in critical condition, Medicaid spokesman Matt Javadsky, who provides ambulance services in the area.

  The accident took place around 6 a.m., with many hospitals and emergency workers on their way to work at the time, so some of them were emergency responders, including healthcare workers and police officers, officials said.

                            

  Javadsky said his crew carried a mixture of sand and salt to the ambulance, which they began using at the scene.  At one point, he said, an ambulance hit, there was little damage and the crew members were fine.

                                 

  “The roadway was so fierce from the ice that several of the first responders fell on the scene,” Javadsky said.

  After an ice storm hits like a polar vortex - the whirling wind that usually sits on Earth's poles - blows near the U.S.-Canada border.  As a result, the weather is colder than usual in the south, said meteorologist Steve Goss of the National Weather Service.  Norman Center in the city of Oklahoma.

  “As a result we have a good part of the United States flowing south east of the Rocky Mountains which is getting unusually or unreasonably cold winds,” he said.

                               

Police responded to about 30 traffic collisions in Tennessee, and several flights were delayed at Memphis International Airport due to the freezing rain.

                              

  In Kentucky, the governor declared a state of emergency to assist the agencies by coordinating with them as they responded to reports of slippery roads and power lines being cut.  And South Indiana schools and government offices are closed.

  More than two hundred vehicles crashed into a pileup on an icy highway in suburban Austin and five people were taken to a hospital, emergency officials said.

                               

 Goss says the small troubles that go through the polar jet flow bring about a ‘swarm of winter weather’ changes in the south of the country.

  He said some areas where snow does not normally fall will probably see heavy snowfall over the next few days.  He said current estimates show that some areas of the southern plains will snow one foot or more.