A teenager was sent to hospital with a serious leg injury on Thursday morning after a mix of heavy fog and smoke from a nearby farm fire combined for “zero visibility” conditions in southwest Ottawa.
Ottawa police said on Twitter shortly before 8 a.m. that the areas of Moodie Drive between Barnsdale Road and Brophy Drive, as well as Barnsdale between Moodie and Twin Elm Road, were closed due to poor visibility and “several minor collisions” in the area.
Police later expanded the area of closures to include portions of Twin Elm Road and Brophy Drive and asked motorists to avoid the area.
Paramedics were called to Barnsdale Road at 7:21 a.m. amid reports of a collision involving a school bus, a spokesperson said. Crews arriving on-scene, however, found two separate collisions involving four vehicles in total: a bus, two SUVs and a family van.
No one involved in the aforementioned collisions was sent to hospital.
A later rear-end collision at 8:20 a.m. between a car and a dump truck on Moodie Drive, however, sent a girl in her late teens to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario with a serious leg injury, paramedics said.
The spokesperson noted that long sections of the road were reportedly down to “zero visibility” at the time of the incident.
Ottawa fire services said around 9:45 a.m. that crews had located a controlled farm fire west of Moodie Drive that was mixing with already heavy fog in the area to create the poor visibility conditions.
Crews worked with the farm owner to put out the blaze on Thursday morning.
Police said the roads have been cleared for reopening shortly before 10:30 a.m.