UPDATE: Click here for the latest information on this story as of Thursday, June 22.
Ontario Provincial Police say a fuel tanker that crashed into the centre median and sparked a massive fireball on Highway 401 at Brock Road in Pickering on Tuesday night has killed two people.
OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said the crash happened at around 10:30 p.m. and involved two transport trucks and a passenger vehicle.
Schmidt said it appears a fuel tanker truck going eastbound on Highway 401 struck the centre wall under the Brock Road bridge overpass bursting into flames.
The fuel tanker truck was hauling two trailers of “highly flammable fuel” and the trailers rolled over onto the westbound lanes which “ruptured the tanks creating a massive fireball in this area,” he said.
Schmidt said witnesses reported a large fire, hearing explosions, seeing a “mushroom cloud” of fire and smoke and a “whole night’s sky lighting up with fire.”
At the same time as traffic was travelling along the highway, Schmidt said another transport truck in the westbound lanes as well as a passenger vehicle got caught up in the fireball.
Schmidt said it does not appear that the fuel tanker made contact with the other two vehicles, but the fuel that was spraying out of the trailer caused the fire to spread onto the car and the other transport truck.
Two people are dead — both male drivers of the two trucks, he said, adding that police are notifying family members. Their identities have not yet been made public.
Those in the passenger vehicle, a driver and a passenger, were able to get out and escape without injury, Schmidt said.
The driver in the other transport truck was unable to get out in time and was pronounced dead on scene.
Schmidt said all three vehicles were completely consumed by fire.
The accident has closed down Highway 401 in both directions and police said due to fire damage it remained shutdown into the morning rush. Commuters were warned to expect heavy delays while rerouting off the highway to avoid the crash site.
Motorists travelling eastbound can exit at Brock Road and then re-enter the highway from the collectors. The express lanes remain closed.
The westbound part of the highway is blocked at Highway 412 and motorists can get back on at Liverpool Road.
“Anyone travelling in that area is advised to avoid it as traffic will be very heavy this morning as traffic builds,” Schmidt said.
The Ministry of Transportation is conducting its own investigation on the structural engineering and cleaning up of the highway.
Schmidt said the ministry will determine when the highway can reopen, but so far no official reopening time has been announced.
Motorist tells Global News he and his family missed the crash by mere seconds
A young man heading back home along the 401 from Kingston, Ont. to Burlington on Tuesday night said he was one of the last cars to make it out of the area before the fuel tanker truck exploded on the highway.
Justin Grant told Global News he was on his laptop doing work while his mother drove the car and his father and sister were travelling in another car just ahead of them on the westbound lanes.
His parents were both driving in the far left lane when all of a sudden he said he heard scraping and scratching against the barrier separating the east and westbound sides.
He said he turned his head to the side and saw a large amount of sparks and the truck tilting over the median. When he turned around fully he said he saw the truck explode.
“It was extremely quicker than I could have ever imagined, the explosion was very loud,” Grant said. “My dad said that he felt it radiate the heat from inside the car.”
Grant said a truck travelling just behind them got caught in the explosion.
“He was only a matter of 20, 25, 30 metres behind us, just an average following distance and its just crazy to think that could have been myself and my mom just a matter of one second earlier,” Grant continued.
“It was a theatric-like explosion where you almost think of it as being like straight from a movie.”
Grant said his mother then swerved into the middle lane while his father sped up.
“We were basically the last two cars that made it out of that explosion, fireball,” he said. “We basically looked behind us and then we came to a halt about 300 metres down the highway because at that point there’s no one behind us it’s just an empty road with an extremely large fire that has started instantly.”
— With files from The Canadian Press & Global News’ Lexy Benedict