What decisions did you make today?

To read the paper versus . . . what else?

Most of the time, such small choices have little consequence.

But on the morning of Feb. 3, when a blinding snowstorm triggered one of the biggest highway crashes Indiana has ever seen, small choices were the difference between life and death.

Snow and speed were blamed for the massive pileup on I-69, which involved 34 vehicles and took two lives. But what dictated who lived and who died often was much, much more mundane.

The choice between driving your wife’s car with the good tires or taking yours with the bald ones.

Sticking to your usual route to the interstate, or a short, unplanned detour.

Crawling back into bed with your wife.

Or getting on the road . . . toward mile marker 8.

Ivy Phillips asked her husband, Ryan, to come back to bed that morning.

It was cold in Anderson. Snow was in the forecast. And it wasn’t clear there would be any work for Ryan anyway. Just the day before, his boss had sent him home. With construction sluggish, the demand for people who lay fiber optic cable has been spotty.

But Ryan, 28, and Ivy, 23, needed the money. Married a little more than a year, they had four kids. They’d been dreaming of saving up to buy a home. And they needed a bigger car to haul their newly blended family. If there was work to be had, Ryan wanted it.

So Ryan made his choice. He leaned over the bassinette and kissed 5-month-old Charlee. Then he kissed Ivy and turned for the door. He turned back — more than once — for another kiss and another goodbye. Ryan was a guy who needed reassurance.

Just the night before, as they lay in bed, Ryan had grown nervous that the happiness might end. He had asked: “Are you sure you want to be with me for the rest of my life?”

“Yeah,” Ivy replied, she would love him the rest of his life.

Jim Thomas was always glad to see his wife, Katie, return to their Fishers home after her hospital graveyard shifts. But with kids to get ready for school and his workday ahead, their morning encounters were usually all business. Except for that day.

Snow was coming to Fishers, and it was a good morning to get cozy. To Jim’s surprise, that was exactly what Katie had in mind. She asked him to come to bed — and he followed, eagerly.

For weeks, Jim, 44, had been experiencing something unusual — the most peaceful dreams of his life. In one of them, a faceless spirit — he thinks maybe God — appears to him. In another, angels approach him. In either case, they present him with a reassuring message.

“Everything will be all right.”

When National Weather Service meteorologist Dave Tucek awoke in Fishers that morning, his thoughts turned to the approaching storm. He had gone to bed comfortable with the forecast: 1 to 2 inches of snow.

As he called up the radar on a computer at home, the storm appeared on course to dust the city. Places to the west — Peoria, Ill., and Terre Haute — were reporting 1 inch. Indianapolis should follow suit.

What wasn’t apparent yet was that the low pressure system was tracking closer to the city and onto a path where it would draw more moisture than expected.

As he made his way around I-465 toward his office at the airport, the snowfall picked up. By 8 a.m., when someone stuck a ruler in the snow, 2 inches had fallen. And the big blob on the radar screen revealed a storm far from done.

Clearly, he needed to revise the forecast.

The timing of the storm couldn’t have been worse.

Salt trucks and plows that could clear the roads would have to slog through the gridlock as thousands of commuters poured onto the roadways.

**

Among them were Dustin and Alacia Goettman.

Married just four years, they were still honeymooning — soulmates, as Alacia told people. Theirs had been a cowboy wedding. The bride wore a strapless top, the groom a yellow button-down shirt. Everyone wore blue jeans and cowboy hats.

Alacia, 33, admitted to being a little high-strung. But Dustin was ever cool, calm and collected. At 27, he was the rock of the relationship. Together, they kept things in balance.

With three young daughters between them from previous relationships, that was no small chore.

Their short commute through Anderson was their alone time, a moment to talk without little ears listening.

It also had the added benefit of the coffee from GasAmerica. Dustin took his with cream and sugar. Alacia fortified hers with enough flavored creamer and sugar to call it dessert.

Bound for her job at the Anderson Housing Authority, Alacia would drop off Dustin each day by 7:50 a.m. at C.A.T. Communications, the fiber optic cable company where he worked with Ryan Phillips. He would take his gear from the car and lean in to give Alacia one last kiss goodbye.

Today, she added a parting shot: “You’re going to freeze your butt off,” she told him. “And I’m going to be in a warm office.”

“Got a job to do,” he said. And she drove away.

By 8:25 a.m., Dave Tucek’s crew at the National Weather Service in Indianapolis issued a winter weather advisory: Up to 4 inches of snow were possible in Central Indiana.

Out of the ordinary

Ryan Phillips and Dustin Goettman had known each other for years, but really only became close in the six months since Ryan came to C.A.T.

Since then, their families had visited each other’s homes, and the guys had gone deer hunting together. They left together that day, in one of three C.A.T. trucks headed south to jobs in the Indianapolis area. One headed straight for I-69. Two others — including the one with Ryan and Dustin — stopped for gas.

Tim Peavler, in the other truck, pulled out of the gas station and went straight for the interstate. Dustin passed the turnoff Peavler took — the most obvious route — and went an extra block out of his way. Then he turned for the highway.

“They never go that way,” Peavler said. “It was just out of the ordinary.”

Peavler, a bit puzzled, sat stuck at a red light. Moments later, Goettman came through the intersection and moved on ahead of him.

Jim Thomas, who earlier had chosen to spend some more time with his wife, decided to head south to Indianapolis. He had some matters regarding his new paramedic’s certification to take care of at the state capital.

He could have jumped into his aging Mazda 626. But he knew Katie’s newer Mazda Tribute was low on gas, so he decided to take her car and fill it up.

He didn’t give much thought to the tires on his old beater, which were almost bald. The tires on Katie’s SUV, meanwhile, had good tread.

When he arrived at I-69, the snow was falling steadily, yet no one seemed interested in slowing down enough to let him merge. With a white car and a semi coming down the highway, he was faced with the choice: Gun it or stop at the end of the ramp. He stopped.

When the traffic cleared and he pulled onto I-69, two miles from mile marker 8, he heard a radio announcer report the new weather advisory. He wondered what kind of a mess he was driving into.

Two miles ahead, Lt. Scott Zelhart and Fishers Engine 94 had just finished a fruitless search for an overturned car when it seemed as if the heavens opened up. “It wasn’t a 100 percent whiteout,” Zelhart said, “but it was pretty darn reduced.”

With the road slick and the snow thick, the firetruck slowed. Suddenly, through the snow, Zelhart’s crew saw something.

A car that had spun around sat half in the median and half in the left lane. A semi sat on the right side of the road. Zelhart would say later that the firetruck pulled into the emergency lane, its lights flashing.

He picked up the radio and was reporting the situation when the truck shuddered from a tremendous concussion. A devastating blow from the rear bounced the 18-ton vehicle forward.

Two more glancing shots weren’t far behind.

“Then,” he said, “I waited for the train wreck to quit.”

Zelhart started to count to 20 seconds.

The two firefighters facing backward in the rear described the carnage for Zelhart as if they were doing play-by-play.

Semitrailer trucks were jackknifing. Cars emerged from the shroud of snow and plowed into the wreckage. Other vehicles swerved onto the snowy shoulder.

A green Ford Explorer plunged under the trailer of a semi, shearing away its metal skin from hood to rear bumper.

A white Saturn Aura was wedged under another semi, peeling back all of the metal above the dashboard. The woman driving it survived by ducking into the passenger seat.

A truck carrying ground corn for animal feed punched a hole broadside into a trailer, spilling the dusty orange feed across the snow.

Eight times heavier than the Saturn, the 27,000-pound Ford F650 with Dustin Goettman and Ryan Phillips aboard was one of the biggest, heaviest vehicles on the road that day not riding on 18 wheels. It also towed a heavy trailer.

When they came through that curtain of snow, a Hogan transport truck blocked their path. And all that weight worked against them — smashing them violently into the back of the rig, the first of many blows.

When it stopped, the F650’s engine had been ripped off the frame, the cabin had collapsed around them and the trailer had whipped almost up to the driver’s door.

Tim Peavler, who had fallen 10 to 15 cars behind his friends after being stuck at the light, had plenty of time to stop before the pileup. He made a U-turn across the median and headed back to the shop, assuming Ryan and Dustin were somewhere ahead of the mess.

Jim Thomas, who had resisted the temptation to gun it at the ramp, soon saw drivers in the northbound lanes flashing their headlights at him. He figured they were warning of a speed trap.

Then he made eye contact with a lady in a white van who was frantically waving her arms: “Slow down.”

He took his foot off the gas and moved into the right lane. And then he entered what appeared to be a wall of snow — total whiteout. In the next instant he saw red lights in front of him — trucks and cars tangled in wreckage — too close for him to stop.

On the vehicle’s good tires, he whipped the SUV off the road and into the ditch.

Afraid others trying to dodge the pileup would plow into him, he left his car and bolted for the treeline beside the Fishers High School baseball field. Behind him, he could hear brakes grinding and loud metallic popping.

As soon as the noise stopped, he climbed up the shoulder and began looking for the injured.

When the noise behind them stopped, Zelhart released the firefighters to go to work. What they found was a catastrophe.

Three people nearby were trapped in their cars. The woman in the Saturn pinned under the semi begged to be removed. A wall of wreckage encircled them. The wind carried swirling tendrils of snow and the stink of diesel.

Zelhart and his crew began triaging victims. Thomas, who had made it up the shoulder, joined in the effort.

Other rescue crews arrived and, together, they began the process of prying people from the wreckage. It took 15 minutes to free the woman in the Saturn. She emerged relatively unharmed.

They needed only one glimpse inside the C.A.T. Communications truck to see that no one survived.

In all, 11 people were taken to local hospitals. Five refused treatment at the scene. Nearly 30 others who were unhurt had to be hauled out of the crash zone in a school bus. In the end, 34 vehicles were involved in the pileup, including nine semis.

It would take 12 hours to clear the road.

Alacia Goettman heard about the accident almost as soon as the news hit the radios her co-workers were listening to at the Anderson Housing Authority. It never crossed her mind that Dustin was involved.

Ivy Phillips, at home with her baby, saw something about the accident on television, but it barely registered.

Both women were used to hearing from their husbands during the day. Ryan called incessantly, usually starting an hour after he got to work. Dustin and Alacia checked in at least a time or two. The silence today was unusual.

Both women peppered their husbands with calls. At 1:08 p.m., Alacia tried to guilt her husband with a text message: “Hey babe, I’m starting to get worried. I haven’t heard from you. You aren’t in that big wreck on I-69 are you?”

Eventually someone from C.A.T. called to say the men had been part of the accident. The women immediately enlisted family members to help call every hospital and police department in the area.

Finally, Alacia took a call she wouldn’t finish. The man on the other end identified himself as a coroner.

“It all just went blank,” she said.

Allan Phillips, Ryan’s father, heard about his son’s death from Anderson police. He immediately went next door. Before he could even say the words, “I have some bad news,” Ivy knew her worst fears had come true.

Jim Thomas began considering the what-ifs almost immediately. What if he had driven the car with the bald tires? What if he hadn’t been patient at the on ramp? “Multiple little things,” he said, “added up to my life.”

Now he and his wife have been reconsidering those dreams he had. And he is reminded of his close call every time he passes the scene of the accident. “I think a part of me will always be at mile marker 8.”

Tim Peavler has been racked by the loss of his co-workers. And he will always wonder why they chose the less obvious route that day. “My philosophy is that you are on a journey in life, and when you’re done, you’re done.”

For Ivy Phillips, the condolences too often sounded like empty platitudes — everything happens for a reason; only the good die young. None of it, she says, will return Ryan to her. “The only thing I can think of is it’s not fair.”

Alacia Goettman doesn’t dwell on the what-ifs. She prefers to talk about Dustin’s life. And she has girls to look after.

Dustin’s death left a considerable hole. Buried two days before their twin girls’ seventh birthday, he was the one who checked on their tooth-brushing at bedtime and iced their toaster pastries in the morning. She knows that other families have found a way to sort through the pieces.

“Life didn’t end for them,” she said. "It didn’t just stop. It paused for a little bit, and it changed.

“And it went on to a different path.”