Police, firefighters and medics work at the scene of a fatal, four-vehicle crash Saturday morning near the intersection of Haleakala Highway and Makani Road. Two women died and a half-dozen people were injured, three critically, police said. TRACY MICHELLE O’REILLY photo

A four-vehicle crash left debris and car parts strewn across Haleakala Highway on Saturday morning, killing two women and sending a half-dozen people to Maui Memorial Medical Center.

Police closed a stretch of Haleakala Highway and detoured traffic for hours, leading to a massive traffic tie-up.

Three people suffered critical injuries in the crash around 10:15 a.m. Saturday near the intersection of Haleakala Highway and Makani Road, said Lt. William Gannon, Maui Police Department Traffic Section commander. Two others were hurt, but their injuries were not considered life-threatening, and one person needed medical evaluation, he said.

There was no additional information from police as of 9:50 p.m. Saturday.

After police closed Haleakala Highway from the Pukalani turnoff to Makawao Avenue, traffic was rerouted via Loha Street to Iolani Street and down Old Haleakala Highway through Pukalani, according to a Maui County road closure notification.

The roadway closure left motorists bottled up in streets between Haleakala Highway and Old Haleakala Highway. Contributing to the traffic tie-up was the closure of the old highway between the McDonald’s restaurant and Pukalani Street because of unrelated roadwork.

Pukalani resident Laurie Keyhani said that she had dropped off her 16-year-old daughter at tennis practice and approached the intersection on Makani Road just seconds after the crash happened.

“I’m grateful I did not see it,” she said. “Everybody got out of their cars and were looking at it. There was smoke everywhere. . . . People pulled their cars over. . . . Everybody was stunned; their mouths hanging open.”

Ahead of her, Keyhani saw people in a convertible, possibly tourists, who had seen the crash. They were shaking their heads. A woman held her head in her hands.

“They looked like they were in shock, like they couldn’t believe what they just saw,” she said. “It must have happened right in front of them, while stopped at the stoplight. . . . Other people were running to the scene. . . . People calling police. . . . There was debris and car parts everywhere.”

Keyhani said that she didn’t get out of her vehicle because so many others had stopped and were running to help the crash victims.

As she carefully drove on Makani Road through the intersection, traveling toward Pukalani, she could see that “everything happened in the middle of the intersection,” but debris was widely dispersed, she said. An engine, apparently separated from one of the vehicles was on the road, and a truck was on its side 100 feet away, she said.

“People had run over, and they were trying to open the truck,” she said.

Two other vehicles were on the side of the road. Police had not yet arrived at the scene.

Kula resident Tracy Michelle O’Reilly said that she didn’t see the accident, but she jumped out of her car and took pictures as emergency crews responded to the scene.

“Oh, it was terrible,” she said. “It was really, really bad.”

It appeared to her, she said, that the impact of the crash sent the vehicles careening around on the highway, coming to rest in the opposite direction from which they were traveling.

O’Reilly said that traffic came to “a standstill for 30 minutes.”

After making it through the Makani-Haleakala Highway intersection, she drove toward Pukalani to Old Haleakala Highway, but “they made us all turn around” because of road construction.

It took an hour and a half for her to take a detour through Pukalani and get home in Kula, she said.

Even hours after passing the crash site, Keyhani sounded shaken.

“It was upsetting to see,” she said. “Everybody was upset. It was one of the worst accidents I’ve ever seen.”

Keyhani said that she worries about safety on Maui roads, especially as she weighs the possibility of buying a car for her teenage daughter.

Keyhani grew up on Maui, and “when I started driving, it was such a different place to drive,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to drive here.

“The roads are so crazy now,” she said. “People are really aggressive with their driving.”

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.