Several injured after northern B.C. bus crash | Hanomansing Live

Police say about 20 people have been injured after a shuttle bus crash in northern British Columbia. BC's Highway Patrol says the crash happened around 9 a.m. Pacific time on Highway 39. That's just south of Mackenzie, a small community which in turn is about 160 kilometers north of Prince George. Sarah Galashian has been tracking the latest for us all day. We were waiting for information and we weren't getting a lot. What do we know now? Yeah, well, so we now know that this happened just after 9 a.m. That's when the call came in to RCMP that this white shuttle bus had gone off the road. It was northbound. RCMP have actually supplied this photograph of this white shuttle bus that you see sort of really at the bottom of a very steep embankment. This is along Highway 39. And on board this shuttle bus, what we know is that there were contract workers who were headed to Mackenzie. This is happening just outside of Mackenzie. They were headed there to the IRN data center. 20 passengers on board and a driver. The RCMP press release says about 20 and the driver. But all of them injured, and those injuries ranging from minor to serious injuries. And the RCMP in their press release described the scene on the highway as being one of just complete chaos. You imagine the number of people that they were dealing with and trying to assess the various injuries. This is the map of where it happened. So here is Mackenzie. This is happening just—this shuttle bus went off the highway just south of that. It's about a two-hour drive between Prince George. And that highway was closed really for hours. ...hours today. It has since been reopened. It has reopened a single lane, alternating traffic. The RCMP have put out a plea. Anyone with dash cam video, the investigation is open. They're calling this a single vehicle collision. There is no arrest that's been made at this point. They say, though, that they are exploring all avenues here. And as well, just in terms of the number of injuries that they were dealing with, I wanted to say that there was a code orange declared, both at the Mackenzie Hospital and in Prince George. The Code Orange remains in Prince George, and that has to do with just the number of injured people that they're dealing with. It can be a mass casualty, but it doesn't mean that that's going to be either fatalities. They can be injuries, and they didn't know what they were dealing with. And in Prince George, they are still dealing with it. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons we're doing this story is that all day here in British Columbia, a lot of questions about what had happened. And so we're clearing up kind of. You know, dire, more dire concerns, because we were worried that there may have been fatalities there. There weren't. Anything else you want to add? Well, yeah, I mean, to your point, initially when we heard bus, I mean, it was the high school in Mackenzie that immediately got in front of this and said this is not a school bus that was involved here. This is a school bus that was sent to the scene to help transport some of the injured to hospital, but it was not students, rather it was contract workers. They were connected to the IRN data center that's in Mackenzie. You know, IRN is an Australian-based company, rather. It operates three data centers in British Columbia. I'm just going to say that they initially were put in place in B.C. to deal with Bitcoin, but are being converted over to AI. Over the last year, what CBC was told by IRN was that they had 60 full-time employees between Prince George and Mackenzie. But as of December of last year and through this year, This year, they were looking to... ...triple that workforce, and so this is, I mean, there were workers that were coming from some distance to get to Mackenzie, and that's all we know there. What I will say is that IRN has issued a statement about this, talking about the fact that this was a contractor that was operating this bus. But they write that our immediate concern is for everyone on board and their families, and we are supporting the response however we can. We are in close contact with the contractor, emergency responders, and the RCMP as they work to establish what happened, the safety of... Site personnel and community members remains our top priority, both on and off site. And just again, in terms of the injuries here. Code orange was declared. It has been lifted at the hospital in Mackenzie. It does remain in place in Prince George. There are no fatalities at this point, and the injuries, though, are described as being anywhere between minor to serious. Yeah, I mean, at least one person was transported by helicopter, others by ambulance. Last I saw, at least I think it was three or four people in serious condition. So, I mean, there was chaos. It feels kind of sterile to be doing this story from so far away, and maybe eventually we'll hear some stories from people. who are involved in this and give us a sense of what it was like to be there. Sarah, thank you very much.