A fatal crash on a Manitoba highway Monday afternoon led indirectly to a second deadly incident later that night, RCMP say.
The first incident, on Highway 6 south of Grand Rapids, was a head-on collision between an SUV and a minivan.
Police responded around 3:45 p.m. and said a woman, 42, who was a passenger in the van’s front seat, was taken to the Grand Rapids nursing station where she died of her injuries.
The SUV’s front-seat passenger, a 23-year-old woman, was declared dead at the scene. Police said four other people involved in the crash were injured, but their conditions were non-life-threatening.
Police said they’ve determined that the SUV crossed the centre line of the highway and crashed head-on into the minivan.
While the highway was closed for the investigation from around 4 to 11 p.m., RCMP advised drivers to turn around and take another route. One SUV that had opted to wait ended up with a drained battery, and a pickup truck pulled in behind it to help.
Everyone from both vehicles was standing at the side of the road, when a van with a loaded trailer crashed into the back of the pickup, which crashed into the SUV, and cause the SUV to hit two of the people standing outside.
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A 33-year-old man from The Pas was killed at the scene, and another 36-year-old man had non-life-threatening injuries.
No charges had yet been laid as of Wednesday morning, and RCMP said they were continuing to investigate with the help of a collision reconstruction team.
Highway 6 has seen numerous crashes in recent years, including a high-profile December 2021 incident about an hour-and-a-half north of Monday’s crash, which caused the death of Thompson MLA Danielle Adams.
Sgt. Amber Patel told 680 CJOB there are a number of reasons why the highway — which runs all the way from Winnipeg’s Perimeter to Thompson’s city limits — might see so many accidents.
“We usually find that it’s not necessarily due to road conditions, it’s usually because of speed, or it’s due to distracted driving — drivers perhaps falling asleep, and sometimes it is due to impairment.”
According to RCMP stats, there have been four fatal collisions, in which six people died, on Highway 6 so far this year.
That’s a significant increase from the past two years, each of which saw only one death, but multiple collisions that involved serious injury.
For Volker Beckmann, a Thompson resident who was involved in a citizens’ action group to improve safety on Highway 6, the highway has been the subject of safety concerns for a long time.
“I’s been an ongoing concern for many years in the north. I’ve lived in Thomson for over 60 years, so I’ve driven the north hundreds of times — when it was all gravel road to paved as it is now,” Beckmann told Global Winnipeg.
“And it has improved, no doubt about it… different levels of government having improved the pavement and so on. But what’s happening is Thompson is the hub of the north. So it brings a lot of tourism, traffic and a lot of semi-trailer traffic to the north.”
Beckmann said local residents have brought the safety issue to the attention of local officials many times over the years, especially when it comes to the white-knuckle experience of winter driving.
“Until you’ve driven to Winnipeg in these dark, cold, snowy conditions for six, seven, eight, 10 hours, you have no idea of the stress it creates in families with children… with parents going down for medical appointments or on holidays.
“And that’s something northerners face and have to deal with all the time, each time they head south.”
Beckmann said the local Chamber of Commerce is holding a symposium in early September to discuss transportation issues in the region.
“It’s called the Northern Transportation Symposium, and we will be addressing all areas of transportation that is such a critical element of living in the north, because distances are so far.
“We’re talking about improved airport. We’re talking about improved rail. Certainly Highway 6 (and) winter roads.”
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