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A semitrailer collided with a bus carrying senior residents on a rural freeway in central Canada on Thursday morning, killing not less than 15 individuals and injuring 10, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police mentioned, marking one of many deadliest highway accidents within the nation’s current historical past.
The bus with about two dozen passengers was struck by the semitrailer because it crossed an intersection alongside the Trans-Canada Freeway west of Winnipeg, based on authorities. Officers mentioned they arrived on the scene at about 11:40 a.m. and have been working to inform the households of these injured and killed within the collision. The injured have been taken to a hospital.
Nearly all of these concerned within the accident have been seniors from the close by metropolis of Dauphin and its surrounding space, based on Assistant Commissioner Rob Hill, who instructions the Manitoba RCMP.
“Sadly, it is a day in Manitoba and throughout Canada that can be remembered as one in all tragedy and unimaginable disappointment,” Hill mentioned at a information convention Thursday. “There are various individuals in Dauphin and the encompassing areas who’re anxiously awaiting information a couple of liked one. To all these ready, I can’t think about how troublesome it isn’t understanding if the individual you like probably the most can be making it house tonight.”
Superintendent Rob Lasson of the Manitoba RCMP Main Crime Companies referred to as the scene a “mass casualty scenario” that stoked reminiscences of a catastrophic Canadian hockey group bus crash in Saskatchewan 5 years in the past that killed 16 individuals.
The April 6, 2018, collision between a tractor-trailer and a bus carrying members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey league group was one of many worst highway accidents in Canada. The truck driver concerned within the accident pleaded responsible to a slate of expenses involving harmful driving and was sentenced to eight years in jail.
“Solutions will take a while, however I guarantee you RCMP will get the solutions,” Lasson mentioned of Thursday’s collision in Manitoba. “This incident does have echoes of the tragic collision that occurred in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, and we’re very a lot conscious of that. We now have already linked into the investigators in Saskatchewan who’ve firsthand expertise and are among the main investigators within the investigation into the Humboldt crash, who’re helping us proper now in any approach they will.”
Each drivers in Thursday’s collision are being handled within the hospital, Lasson mentioned, and the investigation is specializing in the query of who had the fitting of approach.
Manitoba RCMP officers mentioned all accessible sources have been deployed to the scene, together with forensic personnel who might reconstruct the accident. A help middle was established in close by Dauphin to reply questions for households of the passengers who have been aboard the bus.
correction
An earlier model of this text mentioned that 15 individuals have been killed in a Saskatchewan bus crash 5 years in the past. Sixteen have been killed. The article has been corrected.