A 55-year-old man is dead after 19 vehicles piled up on a highway bridge, one of two crashes on Wednesday morning that RCMP believe were caused by icy road conditions.
The first crash happened northeast of Winnipeg on Highway 59, near Springhill Winter Sports Park, around 6:30 a.m., RCMP said in a news release Wednesday.
A driver travelling south on the bridge lost control, leading to a chain-reaction crash involving 19 vehicles in total, RCMP said.
A 55-year-old man from Tyndall, Man., was pronounced dead at the site of the crash.
First responders helped several motorists with minor injuries, while police officers rerouted traffic to prevent further collisions, police said.
Selkirk RCMP continue to investigate, but they believe icy road conditions were a factor in the collision.
They ask anyone with dashcam footage who was travelling on Highway 59 in either lane between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. to contact the detachment at 204-482-1222.
Semi hits ditch in 2nd crash
The second crash happened at a different bridge, on the Trans-Canada Highway in the rural municipality of Cartier, west of Winnipeg, RCMP told CBC News in an email.
Police said a truck driver was travelling west on Highway 1 around 7:15 a.m. and lost control due to icy conditions on a bridge. The truck crossed the median and crashed into a semi-trailer truck in an eastbound lane.
The semi then went off the road and ended up partially in water in the south ditch, RCMP said.
The drivers of the truck and the semi were both taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Police said the eastbound lanes of Highway 1 at the bridge over the Assiniboine River near St. François Xavier were still closed at noon, while officers continued to investigate.
Icy road conditions were also blamed in a crash on Winnipeg’s south Perimeter Highway on Tuesday morning.
Police said about six vehicles were involved in that crash, but the impacts were mostly minor, as approaching vehicles slowed down but discovered they couldn’t stop in time due to “skating rink-type roads” that kept them sliding.
One person was sent to hospital as a precaution, police said.