HANTS COUNTY, N.S. – The driver of a tractor trailer involved in a major highway crash in Hants Country, Tuesday morning, has been charged.
Five people were hospitalized, some with life-threatening injuries, after a multiple-vehicle crash on Highway 101, just after 11 a.m.
RCMP said four vehicles — including a tractor trailer, a minivan carrying children and a motor home — were involved in the accident, which happened near Exit 7, outside Falmouth.
A 38-year-old woman driving a minivan, carrying three children, was stopped behind a motor home, towing another car, at a construction zone.
The vehicles had just started to move when the tractor trailer slammed into the vehicle from behind.
The minivan collided with the motor home and car.
The driver of the tractor trailer, a 59-year-old Montreal man, is now facing a charge of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm.
The woman and the three children — between the ages of three-years-old and eight-years-old — were all seriously injured in the crash, as was the tractor trailer driver.
A six-year-old child was airlifted to hospital, while an eight-year-old was transported by ambulance to meet with LifeFlight.
The extent of the injuries the two adults and the three-year-old child sustained is still unknown.
A man and woman travelling in the motor home escaped the crash unharmed.
A stretch of Highway 101, between Exit 7 and Exit 8, remained closed in both direction until late afternoon, while crews worked to clear the scene and RCMP investigators determine what exactly caused the accident.
It’s far from the first accident to take place along Highway 101 — which runs from Halifax Regional Municipality through the Annapolis Valley and along Nova Scotia’s Fundy Coast to Yarmouth — and many people have been calling for the route to be twinned.
“There are fair number of accidents on it, but I wouldn’t call it notorious,” RCMP Staff Sgt. Dan Austin said.
*With files from Natasha Pace
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