Icy Road Suspected Factor in Alberta Greyhound Bus Crash That Killed Three
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
BEZANSON, Alta. – Three passengers were killed and many others injured Tuesday when a Greyhound bus skidded off an icy northern Alberta highway in pre-dawn darkness and flipped onto its side.
Passengers were sent flying out the windows of the bus, some ending up pinned under it.
“The bus driver told me he just started to slide and he hit the ditch,” said Tamas Virag, a reporter with the Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune, who rushed to the scene shortly after the 6:15 a.m. crash.
“An eyewitness said it looked like the trailer (being pulled by the bus) got a little bit light and – because these buses have their engine in the back – started sliding around and he ended up going sideways into the median.
Virag said it appears the back wheels dug in and caused the bus to flip.
There were 28 passengers plus the driver on the regularly scheduled run from Edmonton to Grande Prairie when the bus slipped after negotiating a curve dubbed the Bezanson Corner on Highway 43 east of Grande Prairie.
As of Tuesday afternoon, three patients were listed in serious but stable condition in a Grande Prairie hospital, while 14 were being treated for bumps, bruises and broken bones, said Deb Guerette of the Peace Country Health region.
Ages and identities of the dead were not being released until their families could be notified.
“It would be fair to say the weather played a factor in this. The roads were very icy,” said RCMP Const. Scott Hagarty.
One passenger said he and half a dozen people on his side of the bus were propelled out the windows as the bus rolled.
Virag said the crash scene was chaos in a blackness lit only by the spotlight from a nearby fire truck.
Rescue crews worked in sub-zero temperatures to extricate trapped passengers while other victims, covered in yellow plastic blankets, sat huddled on the side of the snow-dusted median.
“A lot were standing around in a dazed state,” said Virag.
The reporter arrived to a roar as an air ambulance helicopter touched down 10 metres away from him on a grass field.
“I pulled up on the shoulder beside all the big rigs and my car started to slip off the road. We had to be pretty careful walking around.
“It looked like straight sheet ice, your stereotypical black ice. You don’t even notice it until you turn or put your brakes on.”
The bus, its roof partially crunched in and its windows blown out, ended up perpendicular to the road.
The driver has been with Greyhound for a year, said company spokesman Dave Hickie, who could offer no further details.
“We’re currently investigating. We’re trying to put together the details.”
Hotels in Grande Prairie were being booked for the passengers, he added.
Traffic around the scene was rerouted, but the roads were reopened by early afternoon.
Corinne Lindgren of the Prairie Dog Cafe in Bezanson said the road is in good repair, with excellent sight lines and shoulders, but is constantly busy with cars, oilfield vehicles and logging trucks.
“That’s part of the reason they had to four-lane it (a few yeas ago). It was getting out of hand,” said Lindgren.
It’s the second bus accident in the area in recent years. In August 2005, a Greyhound bus travelling from Edmonton to British Columbia collided with two trucks along a stretch of foggy highway. No one was killed, but the driver was seriously injured.
– By Dean Bennett in Edmonton
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A list of some bus crashes in Alberta since 2007
A Greyhound bus skidded slid into a ditch in northwestern Alberta on Tuesday after sliding on a slick highway. The accident killed three people and left a number of people trapped under the bus.
A list of some other bus crashes in the province since 2005:
October 2007 – A school bus collided with a tractor-trailer near Camrose, Alta.. Six students on board, ranging in age from 15 to 19 years old, suffered minor injuries.
October 2007 – A school bus crashed on a busy freeway in Calgary’s southwest during morning rush period killing an eight-year-old girl and sending four others to hospital. The crash happened when the school bus struck a gravel truck parked on the road side.
September 2006 – A Canadian military bus carrying soldiers from a British army training unit crashed, killing one soldier. At least ten others were injured when the bus rolled over near Bassano,, east of Calgary, Alta.
November 2005 – A Greyhound bus collided with two large trucks east of Grand Prairie, Alta., on Highway 43, in the Smokey River Valley. Eight people were injured.
August 2005 – A tractor-trailer collided with a bus north of Edmonton, killing six people and injuring 21 others. The bus was carrying oil workers back to Edmonton from Fort McMurray. Four bus passengers died at the scene. Two died later in the hospital.