PEABODY ? Shirley and John Cafferty, both in their 50s, were happily looking forward to celebrating their first anniversary. Chris and Michelle Bogner, a generation younger, had been married for 14 months and were expecting their first child.

Strangers to each other, the two couples suffered the same fate. They — along with Chris Bogner’s mother — were killed when a tractor-trailer slammed into their stopped vehicles in a construction zone along U.S. Highway 50.

Seven deaths in two days

The five deaths occurred Tuesday evening, a day after a nearly identical accident killed two people at the same location. While the victims’ families grieve, Peabody Mayor Randy Dallke — a first-responder to both accidents — worries about how to prevent recurrences. Two women had been killed in early May, also by a tractor trailer, while the same kind of work was being done a few miles away

“I am not a highway man, and I don’t have the answers, but someone does,” Dallke said Wednesday. “Someone knows how to get people to stop.”

Increased patrols

Off-duty Kansas Highway Patrol officers will start monitoring the construction zone for traffic violations, patrol spokesman Lt. John Eichkorn said. The Kansas Department of Transportation will pay the officers’ overtime.

Also, troopers already assigned to the area will step up their patrols, Eichkorn said.

He agreed that drivers have plenty of warning as they approach the construction zone in Marion County, about 40 miles northeast of Wichita. The zone has been moving gradually as crews replace sections of the highway.

Large orange signs alerting drivers of the construction are posted more than a mile ahead of the spot where traffic is reduced to one lane and vehicles must stop. Other signs are posted every 1,000 feet cautioning drivers to be prepared to stop, and there are flagmen at the site.

Asleep at the wheel

Lt. John Eichkorn, a spokesman for the patrol, said the investigations of both accidents this week were looking into “a possibility of a sleepy driver.”

Trooper Scott Proffitt, who responded to Tuesday night’s crash, said the tractor-trailer driver indicated he was dozing off just before hitting the line of three passenger vehicles and two other semitrailers. There was no evidence that the driver hit the brakes before the impact, according to the trooper’s report.

Similarly, an investigation of Monday afternoon’s crash determined that the driver of a tanker truck had not braked before hitting a pickup truck at 64 mph, according to the patrol. The pickup exploded in flames, killing the two people inside.

They were identified by the patrol Thursday as Cornelus Wall of Canada and Cornelus Sawatzky of Mexico. Their ages were unavailable. Both had been burned beyond recognition.

New safety measures

When the construction work resumes July 7 at the site, two new safety measures will be in place.

Traffic will be partially diverted onto a 10-foot-wide, paved shoulder where vehicles must pass over built-in rumble strips. Also, two citizens’ band radio alert devices will be placed on either end of the project to send an alert message to truckers and others who use CB radios.

Those steps might prevent other accidents, but cannot assuage the grief of the victims’ families.

Coping with losses

In the town of Wright, just east of Dodge City, Bryan Bogner is left to deal with the loss of his wife, Vicky, 43; son Chris, 21; and daughter-in-law Michelle, who was five months pregnant and would have turned 18 on Wednesday.

“Twenty-four hours ago I had a family of six living in my house, now I have a family of three,” said Bryan Bogner, referring to himself and the couple’s other children, ages 11 and 3.

Vicky Bogner had been a payroll clerk in the Dodge City school district for about 10 years — “a valuable employee, very loyal and very dedicated to her job,” said Gloria Davis, superintendent of Unified School District 443.

Michelle Bogner would have given birth in the fall, about the time the other two people killed Tuesday evening — Shirley Cafferty, 51, and John Cafferty, 56, of Wichita — would have celebrated their first anniversary. The two had a 20-year, on-and-off relationship and finally married last October.

“This was the happiest I’d ever seen her,” said Shirley Cafferty’s son, Darrell Ingram. His mother worked on assembly line at Raytheon, and her husband worked at Kansas Auto Sales. The two will be buried in the same casket, Ingram said — an idea that had come to them a few months ago.