TSB posts photos of Ottawa city bus, Via Rail train collision

Video: Globalnews.ca’s Erika Tucker discusses the role social media played in the coverage of the Ottawa crash

TORONTO – The Transportation Safety Board of Canada took to Twitter to update the public on a fatal collision between an Ottawa city bus and Via Rail train Wednesday morning.

The crash happened just east of Fallowfield train station near Woodroffe Ave. in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven at 8:48 a.m. ET.

The TSB is an independent agency that “investigates marine, pipeline, railway and aviation transportation occurrences” but does not determine civil or criminal liability.  It was created by an Act of Parliament and came into effect in March 1990, with the goal of advancing transportation safety.

The TSB aims to do this by investigating, making recommendations based on any identified safety deficiencies, and publicly reporting the findings of their investigations.

By 10:25 a.m. the TSB had tweeted they were on their way to the scene in Ottawa.

About 45 minutes later, they updated with the arrival of their team on scene.

“We’re trying to broaden our reach to the Canadian public, which is why we’re using Twitter and Flickr to get photos as well as info out and redirect people back to our website,” said TSB spokesperson Chris Krepski.

As the investigation began, TSB continued to post photos to Flickr and tweet the latest images.

The TSB has posted photos of transportation incidents before, such as the train derailment and explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec on July 6. In that case, their initial deployment tweet was at 9:07 a.m., followed by a photo of the scene at 11:22 p.m. and many more in the following days.