All Lanes Of 401 Reopen After Fiery & Deadly Crash
Posted February 2, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was the announcement drivers heading out east believed they wouldn’t be hearing for a while – the 401 between Cobourg and Grafton, Ontario finally reopened just after 6pm Friday.
A single westbound lane of the highway went back into action in the morning, but it took until just past the evening rush hour to get the other direction moving again.
The unprecedented closure followed Thursday’s 30 car pile-up that saw two drivers killed and 12 others hurt.
Police still haven’t said much about the victims who lost their lives in the tragedy.
One is a man, the other a woman and both will undergo autopsies in Toronto on Saturday. Their names won’t be released until they’ve been positively identified, but it appears certain that cops have a good idea who they are.
O.P.P. Insp. Michael Johnston admits neither of them were ‘from the area’.
Getting the road back into shape wasn’t easy. There was a large hole in the highway where the fire burned away the pavement. And that’s not all.
“There was heat damage, gouge marks,” O.P.P. Sgt Bob Paterson relates. “The median or the barrier stretching east to west, and for 150 metres, is basically gone.”
A backlog of more than 50 tractor-trailers was forced to sit idle for over a day, unable to go backwards or forwards. They’ve finally been allowed to move on, but clearing all that traffic will take time.
The re-opening also fixes a terrible problem that’s been plaguing the town of Cobourg for most of the day.
The city had almost every officer working on the streets as detoured cars poured off the four lane highway and onto two lanes of its municipal roads.
The mishap took place in a blinding snowstorm and appears to have started when two tractor-trailers and some cars were involved in an initial crash in near whiteout conditions.
Another big rig, carrying a load of gasoline, then attempted to avoid the tangled wreckage, but got into its own accident, and wound up turning over and bursting into flame.
Huge plumes of back smoke rose into the air for kilometres, as firefighters stood back to let the blaze burn itself out. It took hours, leaving little but smouldering ruins behind.
Twisted and burned remnants of cars and trucks are mute testimony to the damage done the day before.
The actual cause of the accident has yet to be positively pinned down, but investigators know the terrible weather at the time of all those crashes was a definite contributor.
“I was actually on the highway around the noon hour and … at points you couldn’t see a hundred feet in front of you,” relates Johnston. “It’s clear to say that the snow was a factor.”
All but one of those injured in the crash checked out of hospital by Thursday night.
Few will ever forget the experience, including Kay Davis, who was at the scene. She had the presence of mind to pull out her video camera.
“We could hear at one point the screams before I got the camera going and you could hear firefighters yelling orders,” she shudders. “I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t believe it.”
One trucker was saved by his C.B. radio. “Just past Cobourg, everything turned just completely white,” Jim Johnson remembers. “Just like a white sheet right in front of you. You couldn’t see nothing.
“I was talking to a co-driver beside me, and next thing we heard on the radio there’s an accident in front of us just over the hill. So we started braking, and next thing you know, we heard on the radio that one of the trucks was on fire.”
He heard explosions that he says went on for “a good three or four hours” from the gas in the tanker.
Kay Bann managed to get out of her car at the last minute.
“Somebody rear-ended me and pushed me up into them and then my car went sideways. Inside the car, glass flying … And I kept getting hit from both sides.
“And when they finally quit hitting me, I got the driver’s door open and then I looked. I knew my van was a complete write off and I opened up my door. I pushed it open and a man came and said everything is going to start to explode behind you.”
There are also stories of heroism both great and small emerging from the terrible scene.
One truck driver approaching the mishap is said to have gotten out of his vehicle and waved other motorists down, before they added to the disaster.
And a 73-year-old Oshawa woman credits her niece with saving her life.
Shirley Jones recalls the young woman was at the wheel when their car was hit by the tractor-trailer.
“If it wasn’t for her quick thinking, we’d be dead,” she reveals. “She saw a van coming down this way, and it was weaving back and forth, and she just went over to the other side of the road. And then we got hit. …
“Even the doctors told us we were lucky to be alive.”
Cops say that while the damage and the death were terrifying, the actions of those who came to help were inspiring.
“I’m a 25-year officer and that scene was horrific,” Johnston relates. “For a civilian to put themselves in harm’s way with, you know, a fire that high, all kudos to them.”
Stretch of 401 prone to problems
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