Two people are dead after a fiery crash shut down part of one of Houston's busiest highways late Sunday afternoon. The wreck brought traffic on the north side to a halt and left a stretch of the Eastex Freeway closed for hours, as emergency crews responded to a collision that ended in flames and claimed two lives.
The crash unfolded on Interstate 69 East, the freeway known locally as the Eastex or East Texas Freeway. It happened in the southbound lanes at Beltway 8 North, near the North Belt exit ramp on the city's north side, a heavily traveled interchange where two of the region's major routes meet and where traffic tends to build up throughout the day.
According to investigators, the collision happened just before 5 p.m. A heavy truck and another vehicle came together in the southbound lanes, and the impact was severe enough to set the wreckage ablaze. The fire added to the danger of an already chaotic scene and complicated the work of the first responders who rushed to the crash.
Two people were killed in the crash. Authorities have not yet released their identities or said which vehicle they were traveling in, and it remained unclear how many people in total were involved. Officials were still piecing together the sequence of events in the immediate aftermath of the deadly collision.
The impact on traffic has been significant. The southbound lanes of the freeway remained closed well into the evening as crews worked to clear the burned wreckage and reopen the roadway. Drivers heading south through the area faced lengthy delays and were forced to seek alternate routes around the shuttered stretch of highway.
For now, the cause of the crash remains under investigation. Authorities were working to determine exactly how the heavy truck and the other vehicle collided and what led to the fire that followed. Officials said the inquiry would continue as they gathered evidence at the scene and tried to establish what went wrong on the busy freeway.