Alberta RCMP asked drivers to stay off the QEII Highway Friday morning after poor road conditions and multiple vehicle collisions closed a portion of the highway between Olds and Didsbury.
Police said one collision claimed the life a 58-year-old man from Fort Saskatchewan.
As of 8:30 a.m., police said traffic was unable to “proceed through the area due to multiple collisions.”
About an hour later, RCMP said a ‘tow advisory’ was in place between Red Deer and Airdrie and advised motorists not to call tow trucks for help because they would be unable to access the area.
Adam Loria, EMS public education officer, confirmed to Global News that one person was pronounced dead on scene following a multi-vehicle crash around 8:45 a.m. on the highway near the Highway 27 overpass. Another four people were taken by ground ambulance from the crash site to various hospitals. All four patients were considered to be in serious condition with non-life-threatening injuries.
The northbound lanes of the QE2 between Olds and Didsbury were reopened just after 11 a.m. The southbound lanes reopened at around 4:40 p.m.
While this section of the highway was closed, RCMP said poor driving conditions extended along the highway to Red Deer and south to Airdrie.
511 Alberta advised motorists to drive with caution due to icy conditions after it reopened lanes north of Didsbury.
Stephen Goodall was driving from Calgary to Edmonton on Friday morning. The sales rep who frequently makes the drive said the trip took more than an hour longer than it usually does.
Goodall said the roads were “extremely icy.”
“It was very deceiving, actually. The roads were really good coming out of Calgary and Airdrie, but once you got north of Crossfield, they really started to deteriorate,” he said in an interview from inside his vehicle.
“You could tell the graders had gone on to it and scraped it. You could see the snow removed off onto the side, so you think that the roads would be in good shape. But I think with the moisture over last night and the melting that’s been happening, and then the fog rolling in, just extremely icy.”
He said at parts all traffic was down to a crawl, with most of the crashes — including vehicles sliding off the highway or rollovers — happening as motorists approached Olds, Alta.
“There was no traffic at all on the southbound lane. Nothing. Well, actually, that’s not true. There was a plow truck, but he was in the southbound lane going north. So just really cleaning up the highway,” Goodall said.
He said there were two separate major scenes of multi-vehicle collisions.
“There was multiple semi-trucks and unfortunately, there was cars pinned in between them as well,” Goodall said. “It was a mess just spread out all over the highway.”
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Diana Polowick, who was driving north between the major cities with her husband, said the amount of ice on parts the highway’s surface made it look like a skating rink.
“There was no way, even if the sun was shining, it would have been slippery. And the fog, it was just the perfect conditions for bad roads,” she said.
“We’ve seen some of the bad roads before, so we’ve learned how to drive in the snow. But you could tell that it was just not good road conditions for anybody, anybody, regardless of their abilities.”
“When you’re doing winter driving, you don’t hit your brakes, otherwise, you slide. But you don’t get close to the person in front of you. You give everybody a lot of space and you just continue on at the pace of all the other cars, so that you’re not part of the problem.”
–with files from Ryan White and Adam Toy, Global News
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