A church says one of its members died and several others were injured after the bus they were on lost control, rolled over and ejected children and adults on a northern Alberta highway Saturday night.
Grande Prairie Seventh-day Adventist Church says the members were on their way back to Grand Prairie from St Albert, when their bus crashed on an icy road while trying to switch lanes near an exit on Highway 43.
“Dark and cold, they did their best to help each other,” the church’s pastor, Dan Wilson, said in a Sunday statement on the church’s Facebook page.
“One of our kids found a phone and called 911. I hate with all my being to share that Lillian Banda died at the scene after being ejected from the bus.”
Banda was a leader with the “the Grand Prairie Pathfinder Club.” A program for youth between 10 and 17 and is “focused on spiritual growth, leadership development, community service, and outdoor adventure.”
RCMP in Grande Prairie said Sunday they responded to a call for a rollover at around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night and the bus was carrying 37 children and adults in total.
A 50-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene, six people were taken to hospital in serious condition and 16 others were assessed for injuries, police said.
Mounties said the passengers who weren’t injured were taken to a firehall in Debolt, a town about one kilometre east of the bus rollover and 60 kilometres east of Grand Prairie, so they could get warm.
An initial investigation has found the road conditions might have been a factor in the bus’s collision with a median, before it rolled over and landed on its wheels.
An RCMP collision reconstructionist attended the scene and Mounties said an investigation in ongoing.
Wilson said its members are either back home now or stable and recovering in hospital.
“Some will need broken bones repaired. All will need healing of the heart,” he said in the statement.
“We are working to have that support continue in some form in the days and weeks ahead.”
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