AUSTIN (KXAN) -- On March 14, a crash on Interstate 35 that involved 18 vehicles resulted in the death of five people and left 11 others injured. Austin-Travis County EMS gave its perspective on its response time to the call and the agency's challenges when evaluating the scene. The agency spoke about its initial response to the crash and how it discovered the severity of the crash. Truck driver in fatal I-35 crash allegedly under influence of drugs, affidavit says "We first started getting 911 calls about 11:20 p.m. on Thursday night. For the first couple of minutes, it was unclear of how big this incident was. As we continued to get additional calls, our call takers were able to get more information and pretty quickly we realized that this was bigger than just a normal collision," Captain Christa Stedman said. ATCEMS medics said when they arrived on the scene they performed triage, where the first unit that arrives checks as many vehicles for patients as they can. "You're going to look for the vehicles that are most damaged, and you're going to assess the patients inside. Depending on what you find, you put them in sort of a priority list," Stedman said. "When someone is very obviously deceased, we would just move on to the next person, because the next person might be favorable." The agency also spoke of the challenges it faced when accessing the scene due to the narrow area of I-35 and the concrete barriers that were put in place. "Accessing the scene was really difficult, not just because of the traffic, but because of where it was on the highway. That area of I-35 is so narrow, and it has like you mentioned those concrete barriers," Stedman said. "So a lot of our crews ended up accessing the scene from the frontage road, and we did what we call counter flow. So we go north on the southbound frontage road, that way we can put ourselves right next to the scene and get as close as possible." The driver of the semi-truck, Solomun Weldekeal-Araya, who was later arrested by law enforcement, was not transported or treated by paramedics, according to ATCEMS. ...read more read less