Winter’s first major snowfall was responsible for the traffic deaths of seven people, RCMP say.
A 19-year-old woman in Chilliwack was killed Thursday morning after her late 1990s Honda Civic went out of control on Highway 1.
The woman, alone in the car, had been eastbound in the right-hand lane east of Annis Road at about 8:30 a.m. when the car veered off the highway in the midst of the morning’s snowfall.
Her car did not have snow tires on, police said.
The accident shut down traffic, although one lane was opened before noon at Annis Road.
There was another fatality in Chase, also on Highway 1. A two-vehicle accident resulted in one death and one person trapped.
One more person was killed on the highway in Revelstoke, media reports said, and another in Savona, west of Kamloops.
Two Vancouver women were also killed Wednesday morning because of the bad weather in Campbell River.
A car with five occupants slid on black ice and collided with an oncoming logging truck on Highway 19.
The driver, 54-year-old Nora Wilson, and front passenger, 45-year-old Loreen Duncan died, while two other passengers were airlifted to hospital.
Back in the Lower Mainland, there was a major accident at 184th Street and 88th Avenue in Surrey. A vehicle was reported to have struck a barn and two people were trapped.
The snow that fell Wednesday night and Thursday morning slowed traffic and transit operations throughout the Lower Mainland.
Probably the most notable transit problem was TransLink’s shiny new Canada Line service, where a train and its occupants were stuck on the overhead guideway between Bridgeport and Aberdeen stations for about an hour because of snow and ice on the power rail.
The blockage required a bus bridge to operate between Bridgeport Station in Richmond and the Marine Drive Station in Vancouver.
The train was recovered at 10:30 a.m. and a de-icing train dispatched to get the bridge usable again.
TransLink’s older SkyTrain service was moving normally Thursday morning, although it was crowded and crowd-control measures had to be put in place at the always-busy Commercial Broadway station.
Bus service up Burnaby Mountain to Simon Fraser University was delayed several hours, and only resumed in the evening.
HandyDART service had been continuing earlier in the day but by 9:39 a.m. it was cut off except for dialysis, cancer and work.
There was also talk on the Twittersphere on the weather situation and users’ bad moods.
Lamenting about the situation was @cwistal, who tweeted “Commuting on the SkyTrain makes me loose [sic] hope in humanity today. Grown ass adults pushing and shoving needlessly.”
From @anudawit came the sad story that “Took me nearly 3 hours to get into work today – man this #snow is making my commute insane!”
But the snow wasn’t all bad.
For skiers and snowboarders, the white stuff just meant improving early season conditions.
Cypress and Grouse Mountain were already open but Thursday was the planned opening day at Mount Seymour, which was reporting in the morning that it had three centimetres of snow over the past 24 hours for a total snowfall of 120 cm.
Also opening Thursday were ski resorts in the Interior of B.C. – Silver Star in Vernon and Kelowna’s Big White
with file from Laura Baziuk
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