Fifteen people were killed when a bus carrying seniors to a casino collided with a semi-trailer truck at a highway intersection in a rural part of the Canadian province of Manitoba on Thursday.
Rob Hill, Commanding Officer of the Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the bus was carrying 25 people. Ten people were taken to hospitals.
RCMP Supt. Rob Lasson said, “as of right now the drivers of both the bus and truck are alive and in hospital.”
He did not say if they were among the 10 listed as injured. The dead were mainly elderly.
“The public is reeling and asking a lot of questions and people are trying to determine if their loved ones were involved,” Lasson said. “Death on this scale is never normalised for us.”
The crash scene was in Carberry, a city 170 kilometres (105 miles) west of Manitoba’s capital of Winnipeg.
“The news from Carberry, Manitoba is incredibly tragic,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. “I’m sending my deepest condolences to those who lost loved ones today, and I’m keeping the injured in my thoughts.”
A family support centre has been set up at a Lutheran Church in Dauphin, Manitoba, for relatives. Police said the people on the bus were from Dauphin and the areas around it.
Flags have been lowered to half-staff at the Manitoba legislature.
A spokesperson for the Sand Hills Casino in Carberry said the van had been scheduled to arrive there later in the day.
