Fatal crash on notorious B.C. highway traps travellers for hours, prompting calls for change

The busy Sea to Sky highway was closed for hours after two crashes on Sunday—stranding travellers and prompting calls for change.

Thousands of travellers were stranded overnight on one of British Columbia’s most notorious highways Sunday, prompting demands for safety improvements and an evacuation strategy.

Some travelers set up picnic blankets and camping chairs while others lay down on the Sea-to-Sky Highway as they waited up to 12 hours to get off the route following a deadly crash.

Entrepreneur and social media influencer Brittany Michalchuk documented the chaos and posted updates on her social media account, describing the scene as sprawling and unnerving, with cars lined up as far as the eye could see.

“Some people might think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not—it truly felt like an apocalypse,” she said. “People were hungry, they were thirsty, we were confused.”

Dual investigations are now underway after an RCMP officer responded to two motorcyclists allegedly driving erratically, with one dying at the scene. That investigation fully shut down the Sea-to-Sky between West Vancouver and Whistler from 5:30 p.m. on Sunday.

It reopened at 2 a.m. Monday but took hours to clear.

A long-standing problem

The mayor of Squamish isn’t just used to these complaints and traffic snarls, he was caught up in Sunday’s gridlock and managed to direct drivers around him to clear the way for some of them to get to an off-ramp out of the area.

“Surely there are lessons learned from these lengthy investigations and they can be applied through incremental improvement over time to the highway,” said Armand Hurford. “Refining the actual infrastructure itself and, of course, the response to the incidents is a fair expectation and I’m not seeing that at this point.”

Hurford pointed out that it’s wildfire season and there’s no escape route for those trapped on the highway while motor vehicle investigations are undertaken, not to mention the possibility of a medical emergency or other needs of travellers who can easily spend five hours or more in place.

Related: B.C. Highway Patrol impounds more than 60 vehicles in 1 week of Sea to Sky enforcement

Highway 99 is under provincial jurisdiction so CTV News asked the transportation minister what he planned to do with the issue once again making headlines.

“It is a dangerous stretch of highway,” Mike Farnworth acknowledged. “It is a challenging route and we’re always looking at ways in which we can improve things.”

Were Mounties busy with the World Cup?

In one of her videos, Michalchuk captured several dozens of people confronting an RCMP officer with one urging them to “be providing information to people about what to do.”

The area has spotty cell service and the traffic backup stretched for several kilometres, meaning even DriveBC updates were unavailable to many of the stranded motorists and their passengers.

“We were asking the cops, ‘Do you know when this is going to be cleared out? Can anyone give us water? Can anyone give us food?’ and they’re like ‘No, sorry,’” said Michalchuk. “(They said) ‘A lot of the police and our RCMP are, unfortunately, held up with FIFA, for the (World) Cup in the City of Vancouver, so we didn’t have a lot of resources on the highway.’”

CTV News asked B.C. RCMP’s E-Division about that statement, and while they did not deny that was the case, a spokesman wrote: “the Squamish RCMP were responding to multiple serious incidents simultaneously, which was far more likely to have had an impact on available resources, if any.”

Staff Sgt. Kris Clark went on to say that since the highway is a narrow route without many nearby roads to divert traffic, “Highway 99 not only demands, but receives, a priority response from investigators, as well as our Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Services” and that they re-open roadways as soon it’s feasible to do so in a way that doesn’t compromise investigations.