7 killed in Alberta highway crash
Baku, April 28 (AZERTAC). Seven people are dead and two more are critically injured after a “horrific” head-on collision northeast of Edmonton on Friday afternoon, RCMP said.
Mounties are investigating the fiery crash on Hwy. 63 — one of Canada's deadliest highways between Edmonton and Fort McMurray — where just after noon two pickup trucks collided head-on.
Brave motorists pulled a girl from the burning wreckage before paramedics arrived to the scene. She was flown to hospital where she later died, police said.
“(It’s) certainly a collision on the level that we haven’t seen here in awhile. It’s very sad,” said Const. Christina Wilkins with Wood Buffalo RCMP.
The injured crash survivors — a 34-year-old man and a young boy — have been airlifted to hospital in Edmonton by both STARS Air Ambulance and Phoenix Heli-Flight from Fort McMurray.
RCMP said early indications are that a northbound pickup truck carrying three people was passing another vehicle near Wandering River when it struck a southbound pickup truck carrying six people.
Four of the seven dead were travelling southbound in the pickup with the injured 34-year-old man and young boy. Three of the seven dead were travelling northbound with the injured teenage girl.
Cam Heke, a spokesman for STARS, said their air ambulance transported a young boy to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton. He was in stable condition upon arrival.
Paramedics from Fort McMurray flew to the scene and transported another man to Lac La Biche, Alta., who was then flown to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.
“This was an extremely serious collision,” said Heke.
“Our paramedics, nurses and pilots certainly have the same range of emotions as anyone else.”
Heke said the medical crews are offered a stress debriefing after they respond to serious collisions.
Police are not releasing any names of the injured or deceased people at this time.
Conditions on the highway were and “unfavourable” at the time of the collision, Wilkins said. Police haven’t determined if alcohol or speed were factors in the collision.
The highway will remain closed for at least the next five hours as the RCMP continue to investigate the crash.
It has long been suggested the highway needs to be twinned after several high-profile fatal collisions.
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had a population of 3,645,257 in 2011, making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces. Alberta and its neighbour, Saskatchewan, were established as provinces on September 1, 1905. Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the US state of Montana to the south. Alberta is one of three Canadian provinces and territories to border only a single U.S. state and is also one of only two provinces that are landlocked.
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