CHP investigating fatal and major injury crashes on Highway 17

UPDATE 2/14/2019 10:00 p.m. CHP Santa Cruz issued an update saying that a crash on Highway 17 in the northbound lanes of the summit involving a tree was fatal.

A crash that happened earlier in the same area involving an overturned car resulted in major injuries and not fatalities.

It was a long night for drivers along Highway 17 with traffic slowing things down to a crawl.

“I got the alert on Twitter and then at work. So I left probably around four o’clock. Got all the way up to the summit to the very front and then got turned around by the police,” said Jennifer Rettig, a Los Gatos resident.

Rettig makes the commute daily from her Santa Cruz office to her Los Gatos home. Only this time she was stopped.

“Decided that I’d better just spend Valentine’s Day with other people stranded here at the top of the hill,” said Rettig, who stopped by the Summit House restaurant with other drivers to wait out the traffic.

“Looking at the traffic, we can’t go back home the normal direction which is only 7 miles away,” said Dan Knudsen, another Los Gatos resident. “We’re going to wind up driving about 20 miles around to get to our house.”

“I had a dinner with my 12 year old son for Valentine’s, so he’s a little bummed,” said Rettig.

Others tried to brave the slow battle up the hill in hopes of maybe making it to their Valentine’s Day plans. But Rettig just made the best of it.

“We were all strangers at the bar just chatting with each other about that and plotting our route home as best as we could,” she said. “So yeah, kindred spirits.”

UPDATE 2/14/2019 6:01 p.m. CHP Santa Cruz issued an update saying that a crash on Highway 17 in the northbound lanes of the summit involving a tree was fatal.

A crash that happened earlier in the same area involving an overturned car resulted in major injuries and not fatalities.

CHP still hopes to have northbound lanes reopened within an hour.

UPDATE 2/14/2019 5:45 p.m. CHP Santa Cruz is at the scene of two fatal crashes on Highway 17 near the Summit.

It started when a car flipped in the northbound lane of the highway, but then a tree on the southbound side fell and hit a car in the northbound lane. The driver lost consciousness and hit several other cars.

CHP reports that both of these collisions now involve fatalities.

The southbound lanes are cleared and reopened, but the northbound side of the highway is closed.

Crews hope to have those lanes cleared within the hour, but expect heavy traffic if you are traveling in that direction.

PREVIOUS STORY: Drivers can expect major traffic delays on Highway 17.

According to the California Highway Patrol, all northbound lanes at Summit Road near Redwood Estates were blocked as of 4 p.m. Thursday.

CHP said they’re responding to multiple injury accidents and downed trees before and after the Summit.

Traffic on northbound Hwy 17 is being diverted to Summit Road.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

{“url”:”https://twitter.com/CHPscrz/status/1096195495737749506″,”author_name”:”CHP Santa Cruz”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/CHPscrz”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Traffic alert: we have several significant events relating to injury collisions & trees down in the area of N/B Highway 17 before and after the summit.&#lt;/p&#gt;– CHP Santa Cruz (@CHPscrz) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/CHPscrz/status/1096195495737749506?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;February 14, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}

{“url”:”https://twitter.com/CHPSanJose/status/1096191500331843584″,”author_name”:”CHP San Jose”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/CHPSanJose”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;We are currently working an injury accident on NB 17 NO Summit. Northbound traffic is currently being diverted to Summit Rd.&#lt;/p&#gt;– CHP San Jose (@CHPSanJose) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/CHPSanJose/status/1096191500331843584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;February 14, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}