Fog blamed for 50-vehicle pileup outside Nashville

NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) - Ice and thick fog are blamed for a more than 50-vehicle pileup that left one man dead and brought to a standstill one of the Nashville-area's major commuter routes on Thursday morning, officials said.

The wreck on Vietnam Veterans Parkway, which connects the northern suburban communities of Hendersonville and Gallatin with Interstate 65 and Nashville, occurred early on Thursday, according to Danny Vanlee, assistant administrator of the Sumner County Emergency Management Agency.

He said the chain-reaction accident was caused when the thick fog on a bridge "must have frozen and caused an ice patch."

The clean-up and rescue effort took hours because of the number of cars and the fog. Authorities cleared the parkway and opened it to traffic shortly after noon.

The 22-year-old man who died in the wreck was among a at least 18 people taken to area hospitals. Police dispatchers in Hendersonville said that there were more patients who were seeking treatment on their own.

A tanker truck and at least one school bus were involved, but the truck driver and children were not hurt, Vanlee said. The rest were personal vehicles.

The wreck occurred in the eastbound lanes that lead away from Nashville and toward Gallatin, but Vanlee said both sides had to be closed so rescuers could get to the vehicles in the wreck.

(Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Jerry Norton)