CHAOS ON THE COQUIHALLA
Victims ‘shaken ... it was traumatic’
Every month, Vancouver resident Jordan Kawchuk travels to Kelowna to spend a few days with his two daughters who live there with their mother.
On Sunday, he was enjoying lunch in downtown Kelowna with his girls and preparing to say goodbye when he began to feel uneasy about the weather. Snow had been falling heavily and temperatures hovered around 0 C.
“It was pouring snow, alarming snow,” said Kawchuk. “If I could go back a day, I would have stayed the night.”
Around 8 p.m. on Sunday, while travelling on the Coquihalla Highway, the Greyhound bus in which Kawchuk was a passenger became involved in a multi-vehicle crash. One other bus was also involved, along with at least two tractortrailer units and a number of smaller passenger vehicles.
The resulting accident, just south of the Othello Road exit, shut down the highway between Hope and Merritt for hours and sent 29 people to hospital in conditions ranging from stable to critical. Another 136 uninjured passengers were taken to a nearby warming centre at Hope Secondary School.
Kawchuk told Postmedia News on Monday that he was half-asleep listening to a podcast when he was jolted awake.
“We found ourselves kind of precariously teetering on the edge of the road and I remember everyone standing up and screaming, ‘Get to the right!,’ like you’re trying to right a boat,” he said, adding that he was “petrified.” “I think it was the bus driver that said over the intercom, ‘Brace yourself.’ There was this very long pause and — smash. It was the most incredible impact ever.”
The sequence of events that led to the pileup remained unclear Monday, said B.C. RCMP Traffic Services spokesman Const. Mike Halskov.
“I’m of the understanding that it was an extremely chaotic scene last night because of the number and size of the vehicles involved and the number of people that were involved, so they ’re trying to put that together as far as what happened to start this chain-reaction type of collision,” said Halskov. “It’s going to be a matter for Fraser Valley Traffic Services to figure out as the investigating agency.”
Graham Zillwood, who lives next to the stretch of highway where the accident occurred, said it was about 8 p.m. that he heard the “familiar sound” of a vehicle going off the highway.
“I looked to my left and I could see a whole bunch of other vehicles stopped and I saw the first semi and I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’ So that semi hit a car on the road, knocked it down the embankment and then the semi rolled down the embankment on that car.”
A few seconds later, he said another semi-trailer truck speared the first and then a third truck nudged a Greyhound bus before it hit the second truck involved in the crash.
The Coquihalla River separates his home from the highway, but Zillwood said he had a clear view of what happened from his front window.
“I was on the phone to 911 as all this was happening. I was (doing) play-by-play telling them what was happening kind of thing. I’ve done that before here, unfortunately. This happens more often than it should,’’ he said.
Halskov didn’t have a specific number of vehicles involved, and there are different accounts from different responding agencies. B.C. Emergency Health Services said the crash involved at least two transport trucks, two buses and two smaller vehicles. Hope Search and Rescue described a scene with three buses, four semis and 17 cars. Chilliwack Search and Rescue manager Dan McAuliffe said he counted up to seven tractor-trailers, two buses and at least four vehicles. Greyhound confirmed that two of its buses were involved in the incident.
One bus, which was en route to Vancouver from Kelowna, had 50 customers on board, plus a driver. The other bus, which slid down an embankment and ended up on its side, had 47 customers on board, plus the driver. It was also travelling from Kelowna to Vancouver.
Halskov said a couple of vehicles went over an embankment and there was a concern that people could have been ejected, so a search was conducted to make sure that everyone was located.
The Hope Fire Department had “all hands on deck” to help extricate people from the buses and tractor-trailers involved in the crash. Chief Tom DeSorcy said there were nine firefighters and two trucks on scene, and firefighters provided ladders, held up windows and helped people climb the embankment to the road.
“It was ... quite a chaotic scene,” DeSorcy said. Firefighters had trouble getting to the scene because of the “terrible, icy conditions.”
DeSorcy himself was at the warming centre, where paramedics and a doctor checked out people involved in the crash, and put bus passengers on replacement buses.
“People were shaken, and it was traumatic,” DeSorcy said. “I can only imagine what it was like to be on a bus that goes over the side and you’re on your side and having other vehicles crashing in behind you.”
Kawchuk estimates it was about a 12-foot climb via ladder from the bus’ emergency exit to the snowcovered ground. He escaped with a sore back and neck, and was quickly ushered onto a shuttle that took him to the warming centre.
“It was bitter cold and snow, and smoke everywhere,” he said, describing the countless uniformed first responders that seemed to rush toward the wreckage. “I remember looking back and it was all just smoke and lights. It was very surreal.”
McAuliffe said that when he and 14 other search-and-rescue volunteers from Chilliwack arrived at the scene, vehicles were strewn across the roadway. He saw tractor-trailer units that had collided, a pickup forced over the edge of the road, at least two vehicles down an embankment where a bus lay on its side, and another bus caught between two trailers.
“Considering when I looked at all the vehicles and the chaos, the madness that was there, it’s astounding that there were not a whole bunch of people killed and more injuries,” he said.
“I’d love to see a time lapse and exactly how it happened. We’ve been called to over the years to quite a few (traffic incidents) and this is the most bizarre one I’ve ever seen.”
Emergency Health Services took the injured people to hospital by ground and air ambulance. They were taken to a number of different hospitals, according to a spokesman.
The uninjured people involved in the crash were taken to the warming centre.
Many of those individuals, including Kawchuk, were later put on a bus back to the Lower Mainland where most were given taxi chits to get home. Kawchuk said he arrived home at east Vancouver around 4 a.m., where his partner Stephanie was waiting to wrap him in a hug.
Greyhound spokeswoman Lanesha Gipson said the company is aware of five reported injuries to bus passengers, most of whom were treated and released from hospital.
“It was pretty brutal and thankfully there were no fatalities as a result — a number of injuries, to be sure, but given the circumstances, it’s very, very lucky that nobody passed away up there last night,” Halskov said.
Halskov said poor winter driving conditions — including compact snow, slippery roads and limited visibility — are considered to be a major contributing factor in the incident. Impairment isn’t believed to be a factor.
Environment Canada had issued a snowfall warning for the Coquihalla Highway from Hope to Merritt, with up to 20 centimetres of snow expected to fall Sunday.
When asked about the safety of the Coquihalla during the winter, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Claire Trevena said there are variable speed limits in place and maintenance contractors are ready for bad weather.
“We’ve always got concerns about the safety of the highways,” she told reporters in Victoria on Monday.
“The contractors were in their highest readiness for the storm. They ’d been out there, they ’d been working basically around the clock on making sure the highway was clear, so it is something that we are obviously aware of and making sure that it is as safe as possible.”
Before considering whether any changes need to be made, Trevena said she would like to wait for the outcome of the police investigation.
Halskov couldn’t answer whether the buses or tractor-trailer units involved in the crash were equipped with chains. According to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s website, commercial vehicles over 27,000 kilograms gross weight must carry chains between Oct. 1 and March 31.
“That’s definitely something that the Fraser Valley Traffic Services will look into,” he said.
Halskov said investigators have a big job ahead of them. They ’ll have to identify everyone who was involved, determine whether they were injured and what vehicle they were riding in, and get statements about what happened so they can piece together the sequence of events.
From there, they will determine whether any charges need to be laid under the Motor Vehicle Act or Criminal Code.
“That would be classified as one of those 1,000-piece puzzles with really small pieces to put together,” said Halskov.
Gipson said Greyhound is co-operating with local authorities and conducting an internal investigation to determine what happened.
We’ve been called to over the years to quite a few (traffic incidents) and this is the most bizarre one I’ve ever seen.