The Agassiz fire department and local ambulance units responded to a multi-vehicle crash on the Coquihalla Highway Sunday night that saw 29 patients transported to hospital and 136 uninjured.
RCMP haven’t confirmed the number of vehicles involved, but BC Emergency Health Services tweeted that the crash involved two transport trucks, two buses and two private vehicles.
Final update on the #Coquihalla MVI: A total of 29 patients were transported to hospital by ground and air in conditions ranging from stable to critical. A total of 136 uninjured people were taken to a warming centre in Hope. We have now cleared the scene. #bcehsm EmergHealthServices (@BC_EHS) February 26, 2018
“It’s one of those ones we all talk about but hope never happen,” said Agassiz deputy fire chief Gerald Basten.
Around 8:30 p.m. Sunday night the Agassiz Fire Department dispatched a crew of five firefighters with heavy rescue equipment to the scene to assist with vehicle stabilization and patient extraction.
Basten said the Agassiz crew used heavy hydraulic extraction tools, more commonly known as the Jaws of Life, to remove three patients from two of the semi-trailer units involved in the crash.
“As well, two of our guys were key in the evacuation of one of the tour buses,” Basten added. “We moved 45 people out of a bus and into waiting ambulances.”
Basten said the passenger-filled buses put extra strain on emergency response by significantly increasing the number of people who needed help.
He emphasized the quick, well-coordinated response that involved first responders from multiple municipalities.
“It was a multi-agency response to a major incident,” he said. “We train and train for these events that are very rare, but we all know, as emergency responders, that although they’re rare…they’re very high risk.”
The five-member response crew from the Agassiz Fire Department returned to the station Monday morning around 2 a.m., Basten said.
The Upper Fraser District’s manager of patient care delivery Al McIlhargey said the scene was hard to describe in words.
“The pictures give a better perspective of what we were faced with,” he said. “It was a significant event and the vehicles involved made it more dramatic.”
While McIlhargey has responded to multi-vehicle accidents in the past, he said Sunday night’s was the largest in terms of the number of patients involved – even those with only minor scrapes and bruises had to go through triage and an assessment process.
He credits the regions emergency dispatch coordinators for their quick and efficient incident command that helped first responders communicate and tackle the incident quickly.
“Coordination and communication is always a challenge with so much going on at once,” he said, adding that the nature of the crash –with larger vehicles blocking access to all ends of the accident– made response even more challenging.
“We had to divide our response up to the east side and the west side response of the highway,” he said. “We basically had two different incidents going on at the same time as far as our response structure.”
McIlhargey said Agassiz’s two 24-hour ambulance units were both dispatched to the scene.
“We kind of drained the whole Fraser Valley,” he said. “We also had some response from Merritt and Princeton [and] as far west as Coquitlam.”
The RCMP stated that winter weather was a “major contributing factor” to the crash and reminded drivers to keep slow speeds, increase space between vehicles and use winter-weather tires.
