The passenger bus that crashed on Christmas Eve on the Okanagan Connector, killing four people and sending dozens to hospital, had seatbelts installed but few people were using them, police said. They also said that a crash involving the same bus company, Ebus, on the same stretch of highway is part of their investigation.
“The Ebus was equipped with seatbelts. Unfortunately, it appears the majority of passengers were not wearing them,” Kelowna RCMP spokesman Const. James Ward said Tuesday in an emailed statement.
Four people were killed when the westbound bus carrying 46 people, including the driver, tipped onto its side around 6 p.m. on Saturday on the icy highway and ended up in the eastbound lanes. The survivors were transported to three Interior hospitals, RCMP said. On Monday, when the information was last updated, seven remained in hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.
It is believed that 22 passengers were transported to the Kelowna hospital, six to Penticton hospital and 13 to Merritt hospital. The bodies of the four who died were transported by the B.C. Coroners Service. No passengers were left at the scene and the area around the collision was searched by first responders, Ward said.
Police have not named the deceased, pending notification of next of kin, but a cousin of one passenger confirmed the death of Karanjot Singh Sodhi.
The 41-year-old husband and father of two children, six and two years old, had come to Canada in September on a temporary work permit. He was busing from his chef’s job at an Oliver restaurant and winery to celebrate the New Year with his cousin, Kalwinder Singh of Surrey, and to complete a test for permanent residency. He planned to eventually immigrate to Canada with his family.
One of the survivors, Justin McClelland, told Global TV News he was falling asleep when he heard someone yell and the bus suddenly toppled on its side. “It happened so fast,” he said. “One of the guys behind us opened up the roof hatches for us. I was in shock. It’s pretty scary.”
Gurkamal Rathore was awake when the bus began to slide. “It just happened so quick. I guess five, three seconds and next thing I know, we’re on our side,” he said, adding the crash made him lose his glasses. “It’s just complete disorientation because we’ve flipped over onto our side.”
Four days before the Christmas Eve crash, Kelowna resident Gord Vizzutti and his wife, Patricia Rockwell, were passengers in another bus contracted by Ebus that crashed on the same stretch of highway, closer to Merritt.
The conditions on Dec. 20 were “very, very snowy” when the bus travelled on Highway 97C, Vizzutti said.
They felt the bus slipping on the ice and the bus had to swerve at one point to avoid a pickup, causing the passengers to gasp and ask the driver to slow down. It crashed into the back of a semi-trailer about 30 minutes later, he said.
Rockwell suffered a concussion, bruising to her chest and forehead and cuts to her face, and Vizzutti’s hands were cut.
The couple decided to speak out about their crash after hearing about Saturday’s crash.
“We woke up on Christmas morning and we heard about the fatal accident on that same highway,” Vizzutti said.
B.C. Transportation Minister Rob Fleming said investigators are looking into that earlier crash as part of its probe of the Christmas Eve fatal crash.
Bill Gerber and his family were travelling on Highway 97C to Kelowna from Abbotsford when they came upon the Christmas Eve crash at 6:36 p.m., shortly after it happened.
He said drivers who had got out of their vehicles told them there was a crash ahead.
“Then we saw the people before we looked ahead. And we saw the bus. Then it’s like: ‘Oh my goodness, it’s a bus. There’s a bus. This is a bus accident,’ ” he said with a gasp, recalling the scene.
His daughter, Brooklyn and wife, Bonnie, jumped out of the car to join other passersby who were helping the victims, he said.
Gerber’s wife is a retired nurse while his daughter has lifeguard training.
His wife told him that when she opened the car she heard people crying, others giving orders to bring first aid kits, and voices comforting victims.
The family gave out blankets and let people use their phones to call loved ones, he said. They helped for about half an hour before getting back in their car, he said.
Gerber said images from that evening will stay with him for life.
“It just breaks my heart and, I guess I’m a bit of an emotional guy or something but I just can’t help but be so, so sad for these people who, in a blink of an eye have had their lives … Their worlds have changed.”
RCMP said icy road conditions were likely a factor in the crash.
“Road conditions were fluid, transitioning from clear wet roads to frozen with ice and snow on the road surface to the time of day (sunset) and changing weather conditions. Rain and hail was falling,” Const. James Ward, the RCMP spokesman, said Tuesday. The bus is in the RCMP’s custody, he said.
A travel advisory was not in place for the Okanagan Connector, also known as Highway 97C, on Saturday, but “the province had issued general communications around winter driving conditions across B.C.,” said Rob Duffus, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry in an email. “While it was winter driving conditions on the [Okanagan] Connector, the reports from crews on the ground did not indicate that threshold [for closure] had been met,” he said.
Rob Fleming, the B.C. transportation minister, told reporters Tuesday that the Okanagan Connector was regularly plowed the day of the crash. “It had chemical applications, abrasives applied, and … salt was applied by a crew that had been working around the clock in different shifts,” he said.
“There were warnings about winter driving conditions,” on Highway 97C, Fleming said, and as a result there was a “much lower volume” of traffic on the road than usual. He said he was not saying the bus should not have been on the road, but “the advisories we gave were to think about travel and whether it was necessary or not.”
Asked if more could have been done to clear the highways, Steve Sirett, executive director for the Transportation Ministry’s southern Interior region, said the “contractor was out in full force all day that day” and “was meeting the contractual specifications for that highway.”
Provincial officials did not specifically answer a question about who ultimately makes the call whether to shut down a highway.
Maintenance contractors and ministry staff work together to try to get a “holistic picture of just what are the conditions doing, what’s the weather coming in and how are conditions going to proceed over the next few hours,” Sirett said.
“And if we feel that it’s going to be in a state where it’s no longer safe for the public to travel safely, then we’ll make that decision to close the highway at that time.”
— With files from Mike Raptis, Gordon Hoekstra and Glacier Media
