10 minutes from their destination, a crash took their lives

It was supposed to be a nice escape: a group of elderly people from a sleepy town in Manitoba who travel by bus to a casino where they can play the slots and maybe enjoy the buffalo pasta from the Oasis restaurant. Instead, police said at least 15 people were killed and 10 injured when a semi-trailer plowed into the bus on a rural stretch of highway about 10 minutes from their destination.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the crash, which shook Canada and the prairie province of Manitoba, was the first mass casualty they were aware of in Manitoba. For many in the province, it also had a sad echo, recalling another fatal crash in April 2018 in Humboldt, in neighboring Saskatchewan, where 16 junior hockey team players and staff were killed when their bus collided with a semi-trailer truck.

Police say the cause is unclear and an investigation is ongoing.

Amanda Novak, a community leader from Dauphin, the small tree-lined town of about 8,400 people that many of the dead called home, said the crash devastated Dauphin and would reverberate for years to come.

“Everyone in a smaller community is connected in some way, so it’s going to hit close to home for pretty much everyone,” she said in a phone interview.

The bodies of the dead are still being identified and no names have been released.

Ron Bretecher told the CBC, the national broadcaster, that both his parents were on the bus. He said his mother was in a hospital in Winnipeg while his father was still missing. His family is waiting “for a message,” he told the broadcaster on Thursday evening. “It’s just really hard.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the crash “incredibly tragic.” “I can’t imagine the pain those affected feel – but Canadians are here for you,” he wrote on Twitter.

The accident happened around noon local time Thursday near Cranberry, about 100 miles west of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital. Police said it occurred in clear conditions on the Trans-Canada Highway, the national highway used by transportation and passenger vehicles to cross the country.

The bus, with 25 passengers on board, had been traveling for two hours and was crossing the four-lane highway when it was hit by a semi-trailer truck, police said; both drivers survived the crash and were treated for their injuries at a hospital. Police said they are considering criminal charges against the drivers.

Police said many of the passengers killed were elderly. Of the 10 injured, some were airlifted to hospitals in Winnipeg and Brandon, Manitoba.

The hometown of many of the passengers, Dauphin has a large Ukrainian population and is known in Manitoba for the annual Dauphin Countryfest, the longest running country music festival in Canada. The passengers were traveling to Sand Hill casinothe one on the Swan Lake First Nation, about 10 minutes south of the crash site. The casino has over 300 slot machines, blackjack and roulette tables and organizes themed buffet evenings.

Vyosa Isai contributed reporting from Toronto.