Four people have died and dozens more were injured after a bus rolled over on a mountain road on Christmas Eve in Interior British Columbia, and on Christmas Day stormy winter weather continued to create dangerous travel conditions across the country.
The rollover happened at around 6 p.m. on Saturday, as the bus was travelling on a section of Highway 97C that runs between Kelowna and Merritt, B.C. RCMP confirmed the deaths on Sunday and said in a statement that they are continuing to investigate, but that they believe extremely icy conditions caused the crash.
Interior B.C. health authorities issued a Code Orange – a hospital emergency code for mass-casualty situations – on Christmas Eve, as 52 passengers on the bus were sent to four different hospitals in the region. On the morning of Christmas Day, Interior Health said in a statement that 36 of the passengers had required treatment for injuries that ranged from minor to serious. Eight of those patients remained in hospital, with two of them in serious condition.
Throughout the country, communities dealt with weather-related consequences that, if they were less traumatic, still interrupted family gatherings and made the holiday weekend hazardous. Roads and highways were impassable in parts of Southern Ontario, Via Rail service came to a halt between Ontario and Quebec, and hundreds of flights were cancelled.
In B.C., officials have set up an information phone line that families can use to locate loved ones involved in the bus rollover.
“Although the number of patients remaining in hospital is low, this is a life-altering incident for all involved, from the initial physical injuries to the emotional and spiritual impacts of an incident such as this,” Interior Health said.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said 16 ground ambulances and two aircraft were involved in the emergency response.
“Thank you to everyone who answered the call of duty on Christmas Eve,” he wrote on Twitter. “When mass casualty protocols were activated, health care workers from across the region rushed to assist.”
Freezing rain over the weekend had coated Southern B.C. roads in ice, and in previous days the provincial government had been asking people not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
In Ontario, highway conditions were improving by Sunday evening, but some roads remained dangerous.
Sergeant Kerry Schmidt of the Ontario Provincial Police said in a video statement that sections of Highway 401 and Highway 402 had reopened, although some closings on eastern portions of the 401 persisted. Highway 11 in the province was also still experiencing closings.
He warned it could take a long time for help to arrive if people became stuck.
“If you have to travel, understand how quickly conditions can change,” he added. “We are still asking people to stop unnecessary travel.”
Conditions were bad enough in Southern Ontario on Friday and Saturday that nearly 100 customers and staff members had to shelter overnight at a Walmart in Chatham, Ont., until roads were sufficiently cleared of snowdrifts. Store manager Judy Lagasse said all of those sheltering at the store were able to leave safely by Saturday afternoon.
A state of emergency continued in Southern Ontario’s Niagara Region as crews grappled with impassable roads and wildly blowing snow.
Phil Lambert, a resident of Port Colborne, Ont., said his community was a sea of abandoned cars Sunday. He and his daughter, Gracyn Burse, said they were heading into their second straight day without power. They didn’t anticipate it being restored until Monday.
“We borrowed a generator, but it’s only capable of keeping a little heater running for the whole house,” Ms. Burse said. “Our animals are freezing, though. We have two parrots, a budgie and a bearded dragon that needs heat.”
More than 40,000 Hydro One customers in Ontario were without power as of Sunday evening.
The stormy conditions also wreaked havoc on Via Rail’s train service over the weekend, and forced the transit agency to cancel its Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal routes on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, after a Canadian National Railway Co. train derailed.
Before the cancellations, nine trains were stranded overnight from Friday to Christmas Eve, owing to power outages or downed trees caused by the winter storm. Travellers said some trains were stationary for as many as 13 hours as they ran out of food and water.
Via Rail said affected travellers had been taken to their destinations safely by Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile, major airports in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto were only reporting a handful of cancellations and delays on Christmas Day, after days of mass cancellations because of stormy conditions in the cities.
Air Canada said in a statement that some of the worst weather looked to be over by Christmas Day.
“The severe winter weather continues to present challenges for all carriers, but we will be moving into a recovery mode as the storms are now past parts of Canada and the weather is normalizing,” the airline said.
WestJet was reporting 32 cancellations of its 450 scheduled flights as of Sunday morning, compared with 146 cancellations on Saturday and 333 on Friday.
Farther east, in Quebec and New Brunswick, more than 200,000 utility customers had experienced power outages for as many as two nights because of stormy weather.
The outages affected 131,000 Hydro-Québec customers. The utility said most people would have their power back by the end of Christmas Day, but that some would have to wait until Boxing Day. Crews were grappling with fallen trees that had knocked down power lines and poles, making restoration slow and complex.
New Brunswick Power said that roughly 71,000 customers had been affected by what it described as one of the largest outages in the past 25 years. Fewer than 7,000 of its customers remained without power as of Christmas Day.
With a report from The Canadian Press
