Georgetown opened its community center as an emergency shelter on Tuesday after a 70-car pileup shut down traffic on I-70 in the Colorado mountains, and the small mountain town quickly became a stop for stranded drivers, injured people and the pets caught up in the crash. Loveland Ski Resort shuttles carried some people from near the crash site to the Georgetown Community Center, which served as both a warming shelter and a place for animals as tow trucks slowly cleared the highway one vehicle at a time.
Emily Medina said she never saw the crash coming. By her account, she became the 11th car after realizing there was already a pileup involving ten vehicles ahead of her. She said she was just coming out of the tunnel when the road went black, snow was falling heavily and she hit the brakes as cars in front of her had already crashed. Medina said another truck then cut across the road and set off even more collisions and injuries. She said the person she struck was badly hurt.
Ron Grady, who owns the Georgetown restaurant 511 ROSE, said the scale of the pileup was shocking. He said he was closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, but opened the restaurant with a limited menu on Tuesday anyway so people would have a place to sit, eat or relax. Instead, he said, it became mostly a warm stop for a few cold journalists and other locals who came out to help. No one affected by the crash appeared to come in, but Grady said that was not the point. “If there’s people that need help, we want to help,” he said, adding that it was “just a really nice, small Colorado community.”
Georgetown’s response showed how quickly the town moved to absorb the pressure from the crash while traffic cleared slowly and the wreckage was hauled away. The community center handled people and pets, the ski resort helped move passengers away from the highway, and Grady’s restaurant offered another place for warmth on a day when the mountain weather had turned the interstate into a trap.
That is the story the crash leaves behind: not just the pileup itself, but a town that opened its doors within hours and stayed open long enough for the people caught in it to get through the night.
