Dense fog is blamed for a series of accidents that took place on a Virgina highway beginning at 1 pm on Sunday.

The accident scene grew from an initial eight vehicle crash along a stretch of I-77 notorious for it sudden events of dense fog. That scene held the six vehicles, some of them ablaze in the early afternoon of Easter Sunday.

The accident scene would grow as pile-up after pile-up occured growing the accident area to 17 separate pile-ups involving 95 vehicles along the mile long stretch of road.

As many as three were killed in the spate of accidents and another 25 injured. School buses were used to ferry stranded travelers from the scene.

Traffic on the southbound lane of the foggy highway was backed up for eight miles and that stretch would not open until Monday after wreckage was cleared and the EPA cleaned up a diesel spill dumped by an overturned truck.

Yesterday’s accident scene along the Virginia Interstate is the deadliest of a series of seven since 1997.