Three people have been killed and 24 others injured after a glacier tour bus rolled over in Canada’s southern province of Alberta.
The sightseeing bus was climbing up a steep, rocky road to the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park on Saturday when it suddenly plunged 50 meters (about 164 feet) down an embankment and overturned, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Alberta Health Services said 14 of the 27 passengers were hospitalized with life-threatening head or pelvis injuries, five were in serious condition with broken bones and five others suffered minor injuries.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear and the RCMP has launched an investigation with the support of a collision analyst.
A witness who watched the crash unfold told CBC News he was shocked that anyone made it out alive after the bus rolled over four or five times on its way down the embankment and multiple people were ejected from the vehicle.
First responders from several local and federal agencies descended on the scene moments after the accident, according to local reports.
A helicopter from Parks Canada, the federal parks agency, was used to transport the dead and injured from the crash site to five air ambulances up on the ice field or road ambulances on a highway lower down the mountain.
Cpl Leigh Drinkwater of the RCMP confirmed that the driver of the bus was among the survivors but said he did not have additional information about that person’s condition.
The off-road bus, which is specially designed to drive on ice with oversize tires, was owned by Pursuit, a company that operates tours of the icefields between Banff and Jasper.
Pursuit has already begun its own internal review of the crash.
‘We started right away to review what happened, what is our process with our protocol at every step and so we’re doing that internally but we are also working with the external teams to ensure that gets a fulsome review,’ Dave McKenna, the president of the Banff Jasper Collection by Pursuit, told CTV.
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