One person needed to be extracted from a single-vehicle collision along a bridge entering the downtown core Friday afternoon in London, Ont.
Emergency response personnel were called to the collision around 2:13 p.m. on Kensington Bridge along Riverside Drive.
Shawn Davis, a district chief with London Fire Department, says two individuals were inside the vehicle at the time of the collision that saw the car end up on its side in between the girders and the handrail on the north side of the bridge.
“We have had other unique scenes like this, but this is a first,” Davis told Global News.
“On the bridge like that, it was close enough to going over the bridge it could have been something totally different.”
Davis says that while the driver was able to get themselves out, due to the vehicle being flipped onto its passenger side, a single passenger had to be extracted via the rear window on a backboard.
“We were able to flap the roof a little bit to gain more access enough room to get a backboard in to get the patient out safely,” said Davis, noting the extraction only took 17 minutes despite the tight space.
Both individuals were transported to hospital with what Davis described as non-life-threatening injuries.
While no definitive answer could be provided, Davis said he believes the vehicle might have been travelling along Dundas Street and taken a wrong turn before hitting a girder, which put it up on its side and slid to its resting position.
The roadway was blocked off to traffic following the extraction so that city engineers could assess the bridge’s structural integrity. Once engineers cleared the scene, the road was opened shortly after 5 p.m.