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WILDLIFE WONDERS NEVER CEASE
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Red Deer Advocate THURSDAY, SEPT. 19, 2013
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SIX DEAD, 30 INJURED AFTER CITY BUS SLAMS INTO VIA RAIL TRAIN IN OTTAWA
‘Stop! Stop!’
BY BRUCE CHEADLE AND TERRY PEDWELL THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — Passengers aboard a double-decker city bus screamed “Stop! Stop!” as the driver plowed through a flashing level crossing and into a passing Via Rail train Wednesday morning, killing six people and injuring many more. The horrific collision RISK OF COLLISIONS sheared off the TOO HIGH: SAFETY front of the bus BOARD A5 and knocked the Via locomotive and one of four passenger cars off the tracks. Six people died, one of them the bus driver, while several area hospitals were flooded with more than 30 patients, including eight who were still listed in critical condition late Wednesday. “People started screaming, ’Stop! Stop!’ because they could see the train coming down the track,” said Carleton University student Tanner Trepanier, who was in the upper level of the new, double-decker OC Transpo bus. Both levels of the front end of the bus, extending back to the driver’s seat, were ripped off by the impact. “There was a lot of screaming, but then people were actually relatively calm, considering the situation,” Trepanier said of the aftermath. Alex Begin, on his way to his job in downtown Ottawa, was midway back on the lower level of the bus and said the driver hit the brakes only after passengers started yelling warnings. “Oh yeah, we went right through the (safety) barrier,” said Begin, who was at a loss to explain the driver’s apparent lapse of concentration. “I don’t know, too early in the morning? He just wasn’t fully conscious or something,” said Begin. “Because until people started yelling, I guess he didn’t even realize what was going down.” Romi Gupta, a 40-year-old downtown office worker, boarded what she called the “overfull” bus at its last stop before the crash.
Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS
A bus passenger carries a child after a Via Rail train and city bus collision in Ottawa’s west end on Wednesday. “The driver was OK; I got in a minute before and I said hello to him and he was fine,” said Gupta. She, too, could see through the bus windows that the train was coming. “The bus was too fast I find, he could not put the brakes on.” The head of the transit union local confirmed the driver was among the dead. “It looks like a bomb went off almost,” Craig Watson of the Amalgamated Transit Union told the CBC after visiting the scene. In an email Wednesday night, Watson identified the 45-year-old driver killed in the crash as Dave Woodard. Peyman Shamsi, a friend of Woodard who had started with OC Transpo 10 years ago, said he was “one of the nicest guys” at the bus company. “I couldn’t even say a bad thing about him. I’m really shocked, I don’t know what happened,” said Shamsi,
who has driven the same route as Woodard did. “I’m surprised because he was a safe driver. Woodard, who leaves behind a wife and teenage stepdaughter, had celebrated his birthday just the day before the accident, Shamsi said. A number of people gathered on the tracks near the crash site Wednesday evening for a candlelight vigil. The bus was on a dedicated transit line that runs parallel to a busy commuter artery just east of a suburban Via Rail station, about 10 kilometres west of Parliament Hill. Witnesses on the ground said the northbound bus simply didn’t stop, despite flashing lights and lowered safety barriers warning of the westbound train which had already stopped commuter traffic nearby. “Boom! It went into the train like that,” said Pascal Lolgis, who watched
the bus smash through a safety barrier. “He just didn’t stop. He just keep going like that. Then he got hit.” Another witness, Mark Cogan, also said the safety barrier was down. “I just thought maybe there’s a side way around or something but instantly he just . . . he smoked the train,” said Cogan. “He went through the guard rail and just hammered the train and then it was just mayhem.” A broken safety barrier was visible under the bus carriage. The Via locomotive and one of four passenger cars came to rest askew on the tracks, but Via officials said there were no injuries among the more than 100 passengers aboard. The company suspended its Ottawa-Toronto service as a result of the crash.
Longboarding community urged to finish cross-Canada ride
Zombie walk comes under fire from parent
his left arm, including the muscle pain, the paralysis will eventually dissipate. Harrison and Floyd started their 6,400-km cross-Canada longboarding Longboarders have been asked to ride in May in St. John’s. Upon reaching Lake Louise, they step up and finish a charitable ride across Canada that was interrupted took a detour from the route and headwhen Brandon Harrison suffered a ed to Floyd’s hometown of Red Deer, where a fundraising event had been brain aneurysm in Red Deer. planned. Harrison is at Foothills This is where Harrison’s Hospital in Calgary after aneurysm occurred — and suffering a broken blood Floyd is grateful that the vessel that led to a stroke emergency happened when on Sept. 7. they were near a hospital, His condition is slowly not in the middle of noimproving. where: “It’s a blessing.” The 20-year-old, who had Floyd and Harrison, ridden a longboard from who both live in Calgary, Newfoundland to Lake Louhad previously discussed a ise, is now out of intensive “contingency plan” about care and is starting to comhow to proceed if one of municate, said his father, them could not finish the Michael Floyd, who had acride. “I always thought it companied his son on his Brandon Harrison would be me, the old man, ride across Canada for Long who might fall down and break his For Life. Their non-profit organization sup- leg,” said Floyd. Their understanding was the Long ports charitable initiatives to fight cancer, heart and stroke through the sport for Life charity and the cross-Canada of longboarding (like skateboarding, ride “is bigger than us” and must continue, he added. only with longer boards). When the question went out in the Harrison “is conscious and there’s awareness, but there is still some pa- longboarding community about whethralysis on the left side,” said Floyd, er anyone was interested in finishing who hopes that since his son can feel the route, several longboarders exBY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF
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pressed interest in continuing from where Harrison left off. Floyd said confirmations must still be made, but the plan is to start out from Lake Louise on Tuesday with whoever is interested in doing all or part of the remaining 1,100 km to Vancouver. He believes Harrison will be able to finish the ride himself, someday, but for now it’s important to complete the final two-to-three-week leg before there’s snow in the mountains. Meanwhile, Calgary doctors are considering what can be done to help Harrison, who fought off cancer as a child, and was stricken by a previous aneurysm (unrelated to the cancer) at age 15. Floyd said the part of his son’s brain that’s affected cannot be accessed by surgery, so physicians are considering using very focused gamma radiation to cauterize the tiny vessels. “It’s astounding that they can do stuff like this.” He added that Harrison has always has a positive approach in fighting health setbacks. “You have to know, going into this, that you’re going to win,” said Floyd. “There’s no place for fear in that process.” lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
Please see CRASH on Page A2
FOUR-YEAR-OLD BOY LEFT ‘IRRATIONAL FROM FEAR’ AFTER SEEING PARTICIPANTS BY MYLES FISH ADVOCATE STAFF Katherine Belchior did not invite any zombies to her daughter’s second birthday party in Rotary Park on Saturday. Regardless — they came, they saw, they scared. There were 132 of the undead walking through Red Deer streets for the second annual Zombie Walk in support of the Red Deer Food Bank Society on Sept. 14, a group that ended their trundle at Rotary Recreation Park. That was where seven birthday parties were being held that afternoon, according to Belchior. “They were on the swings, they were walking through the equipment. There was literally no safe place for the kids to go,” said Belchior of the about 30 adults and children who came into the park dressed and made up as zombies.
Please see WALK on Page A2
Keystone XL worth the cost of lobbying Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver says the potential benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline far outweigh the costs of lobbying. Story on PAGE C3
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