OTTAWA, June 16 (Portal) – Lowered flags waved in the Canadian province of Manitoba on Friday after a deadly collision between a bus carrying mostly elderly passengers and a truck, as investigators identified the injured and reviewed video footage from a truck-mounted camera.
Fifteen people were killed and another 11 injured in Thursday’s violent collision between a bus bound for a casino and an articulated lorry at an interchange near the town of Carberry, 170 km (105 miles) west of Winnipeg.
It was one of the worst road accidents in Canada in recent memory.
Accident investigators determined from video footage of the wreckage that the bus entered the lane where the tractor had right-of-way, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Superintendent Rob Lasson said at a news conference.
However, the exact cause of the accident is still under investigation, he stressed. “We are not currently blaming or blaming them. We are merely presenting facts as we know them,” Lasson said.
The video was captured by a truck-mounted camera, according to Lasson, who said both vehicles were undergoing extensive mechanical analysis.
According to the police, the truck driver and 10 people on the bus, including the driver, survived the accident with injuries, the 15 other bus passengers were killed.
Police questioned the truck driver but not the bus driver, who was seriously injured, Lasson said.
“The ten people injured in that collision have now been identified,” Lasson said, referring to the people on the bus. “That means everyone else who was on that bus is now probably dead.”
“In the last few hours, RCPM members have had very difficult conversations with family members and sadly informed them that their loved one is among the 15 people believed to have died,” he added.
So far, none of the dead have been individually identified. A coroner’s office official said medical examiners would rely on dental and other medical records to determine unique identification for each victim.
“Most if not all of the deceased have significant facial trauma such that visual identification is not possible,” he told reporters.
“Devastated by this news”
[1/2] DELICATE MATERIAL. THIS PICTURE MAY BE HARMFUL OR DISTURBING. First responders secure the area at the scene of the accident near Carberry, Manitoba, Canada June 15, 2023 in this still image taken from a social media video. PortageOnline/Mike Blume/via Portal/File Photo
The bus passengers were between 58 and 88 years old, most of them women. Of the ten survivors on the bus, six were women and four were men, police said.
Flags were lowered at the provincial legislature in Winnipeg, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the flag on the tallest building of the national parliament in Ottawa would also be lowered.
“Something terrible, terrible has happened and our thoughts go out to the families who have been completely devastated by this news,” he told reporters in Montreal.
Bouquets of flowers appeared at the crash site on Friday morning.
The little white bus burned to the ground. Virtually all passengers are members of the Dauphin Senior Center, acting manager Glenn Kaleta told reporters.
“It’s terrible for our city, for our rural community. And the senior center will be hit very hard,” he said.
Ron Bretecher, whose parents were on the bus, told reporters his mother survived the crash but his father is still missing.
“(My) family is basically just waiting for a message. … It’s just very difficult,” he said.
The victims were from the town of Dauphin, population 8,000, about 175 km (109 miles) north of Carberry.
“Quite literally, everyone in town knows someone who was on that bus,” Mayor David Bosiak told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s obviously extremely difficult to be optimistic at this time. … Everything seems so dark and gloomy.”
Police said they would look at videos taken by passers-by and speak to witnesses.
Nirmesh Vadera told the CBC he was working at a nearby coffee shop when he went outside and saw a vehicle on fire.
“The fire was about 10 to 15 feet high and the smoke was almost 20 to 30 feet high,” Vadera said.
The accident was the worst in Canada since 16 people died in 2018 when a truck struck a bus transporting a junior ice hockey team in neighboring Saskatchewan. The truck driver was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2019.
Reporting by David Ljungren in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Edited by Nick Macfie, Jonathan Oatis, Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler
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David Ljunggren