Four motorists killed in foggy pileup along Interstate 75 in northwest Georgia

Thursday, March 14th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

RINGGOLD, Ga. (AP) _ More than 100 vehicles piled up in a chain-reaction crash on a foggy interstate in northwest Georgia on Thursday, killing at least four people, authorities said.

Several hours after the accident, three bodies were still in mangled vehicles and one had been removed from the scene, Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said. Thirty-nine injured people were taken to hospitals, 15 of them with major injuries.

Earlier, officials had said 10 people died in the crash. Summers revised that number to five and then four.

The accident happened about 7:50 a.m. on Interstate 75 just south of Chattanooga, Tenn., said Karlene Barron, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Authorities said visibility was low due to heavy fog when two tractor-trailers in southbound lanes apparently made contact, sending one across the median where it flipped onto its side. The truck hit several northbound vehicles, and dozens of other vehicles then plowed into the pile. In all, about 125 vehicles were involved in the wreck.

The interstate was closed in both directions after the crash.

Summers said he didn't expect charges would be filed against the truck drivers.

``It did not appear that there was any fault other than fog,'' he said. ``This was an act of nature.''

Each morning, thousands of commuters who live in northwest Georgia head north to work in and around Chattanooga.

Rhonda Frix, an employee at Catoosa Utility in Ringgold, said she avoided I-75 Thursday, partly because the fog was so thick.

``It was almost zero visibility out there,'' Frix said. ``It was worse this morning than it has been in a long time.''

Thursday's crash happened about 40 miles from the site of a 1990 pileup that killed 12 people, prompting Tennessee officials to install a fog detection system on that stretch of the highway.