BEZANSON, Alta. — Three passengers were killed and six more were badly hurt Monday when a Greyhound bus skidded off an icy northern Alberta highway in pre-dawn darkness and flipped over 360 degrees.
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.
Three people were killed after a Greyhound bus rolled over near Bezanson, Alta., east of Grande Prairie on Tuesday. (The Canadian Press)
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“The back wheels dug in, it flipped over completely and ended up right side up on its wheels.”
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 on Highway 43 dubbed the Bezanson Corner, east of Grande Prairie.
Two were in critical condition and four listed as serious at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Grande Prairie. The remaining 20 had minor injuries.
Identities of the dead were not released pending notification of next of kin.
“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.
Mr. 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 sat huddled on the side of the snow-dusted median, covered in yellow plastic blankets.
“A lot were standing around in a dazed state,” said Mr. Virag.
Mr. Virag 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,” said Mr. Virag.
“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 with its back 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.
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.
