‘It’s a terrible road’: N.B. community coping with fatal crash

A fatal crash has exposed long-held concerns with a New Brunswick highway.

Flowers lie on the side of a scorched patch of highway near Port Elgin, N.B., where three people were killed this week.

Two paramedics and a patient from Prince Edward Island died after an ambulance collided with a transport truck in the community of Melrose, N.B., Tuesday morning.

Strait Shores Mayor Annamarie Boyd said everyone in her community is still trying to process the tragedy.

“You can’t help but be impacted by what happened,” said Boyd.

Boyd called Route 16 where the crash took place “scary” and she tries to avoid it.

“I’ll go the backroads long before I’ll ever go the highway just because there’s a lot of traffic on that road and people I think generally have forgotten what a speed limit looks like,” said Boyd. “It’s a terrible road. It needs more police presence. I think we need to make sure people feel that their safe on that road.”

Boyd would like to see the Department of Transportation step in and step up to see how they can help make that stretch of road safer for people.

“It’s a general throughway from our province of New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. Thousands of people are travelling that road daily and we need to ensure that people can pass safely,” said Boyd.

Boyd said the local fire department responds to crashes on Route 16 on a regular basis and this wasn’t the first time there’s been a fatality.

Port Elgin Fire Chief Steve Alward politely declined an interview to CTV News Atlantic on Thursday, saying the RCMP have already reported the details available and the investigation is in their hands.

“The department will not be making any statements about the accident on Tuesday other than to say I am very proud of how the men and women of our department responded and handled this difficult incident that involved other first responders,” said Alward in an email. “Our hearts and sincerest condolences go out to Island EMS and the families involved in this tragic accident.”

Boyd’s heart goes out to the firefighters.

“This is a volunteer fire department,” she said. “I hold them all in my thoughts and prayers because they have to navigate everything they’ve seen and went through this week and I’m extremely proud of them.”

Blue Roof Distillers is located just a few kilometres from the crash site.

Georgina Richards remembers seeing a huge cloud of black smoke on the highway while driving to work.

“People were coming in and talking about a bad accident,” said Richards. “All I knew at that point was that an ambulance and a truck had been in a crash, but I didn’t know any more than that.”

Richards said the road between the two provinces isn’t always the safest.

“Anytime someone gets killed on the highway it’s a tragedy for anybody. But this particular piece of road has a lot of accidents,” said Richards.

Blue Roof Distillers co-owner Devon Strang said he heard explosions while in a meeting Tuesday morning.

“Nothing much went on all day here. We shut things down and went home early,” said Strang.

His heart goes out to the families involved, too, and said Route 16 is extremely busy during the summer.

“Outside of the tourist season, there’s hardly anybody on the highway here. It’s just regular flow to P.E.I. and a lot of transport trucks and stuff like that. As far as if the highway is safe or not, it is safe it’s just highly congested during tourist season and there’s a lot of traffic here,” said Strang.

The driver of the transport truck was taken to hospital on Tuesday with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

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