Connaught RM councillors want changes to deadly intersection

A rural municipality councillor says he would like to see rumble strips installed at the intersection where a tragic crash involving the Humboldt Broncos team bus happened.

Dale Poggemiller, a councillor with the Rural Municipality of Connaught, said he will try to get changes made at the intersection of highways 35 and 335. The junction is located inside the RM.

The Broncos team bus was travelling north to Nipawin on Highway 35 and a semi was travelling west on Highway 335 when the crash happened Friday. Of the 29 people on the Broncos bus, 15 have died and another 14 were injured.

Highway 335 has stop signs with flashing warning lights at the intersection with 35, but no rumble strips that are featured at many rural highway junctions.

“I sure see it now that it’d probably be a very good idea,” Poggemiller said in an interview Saturday.

Poggemiller, who’s been a Connaught councillor for eight years, also said trees along the southeast corner of the intersection along Highway 335 could obscure a vehicle travelling north on Highway 35. But Poggemiller was still at a loss to explain the accident given the stop signs. RCMP detained the driver of the semi, but released him. RCMP have suggested it could take a long time to determine the cause of the crash.

Grant Merriman, president of the La Ronge Ice Wolves and bus driver for the team, said he has driven his players by the intersection of highways 335 and 35 many times. Like Poggemiller, he said trees obscure visibility at the junction and make it a dangerous intersection.

“It’s a blind corner in some ways,” he said. “If you come out across that intersection, the guy in the bus is absolutely, totally unaware that you’re going to pull out in front of him because he doesn’t even see you until you’re both looking at each other.”

Another Connaught councillor, Ian Boxall, also posted on Twitter he intends to seek changes at the intersection. “I will lobby for better signage and lighting at this intersection so this never happens again,” Boxall posted.

In June of 1997, a B.C. teacher on maternity leave, her husband and their three young daughters were killed when their vehicle was broadsided by a semi-trailer truck at the same intersection.

RCMP identified the dead as Terri Lynne Fiddler, 30; her husband Roderick Lewis Fiddler, 33, and their children Jocelyn, 4, Jasmine, 3 and Kassandre, one month.

The family was from Dawson Creek, B.C. Wendy Lou Fiddler, 26, a relative from Saskatoon, also died in the crash. Their truck was consumed by fire, although police believe its six occupants died on impact. Wendy Lou Fiddler was a single mother who left behind five children.

It appears their pickup truck ran a stop sign at the junction and drove into the path of the semi, the RCMP said. There are six crosses for the family in the ground near the intersection.