Five killed in Montreal flyover collapse

At least four people were crushed to death in their cars after an overpass collapsed near Montreal.

At least five people were crushed to death in their cars after the collapse of a flyover near Montreal in Canada.

Quebec police spokeswoman Isabelle Gendron said three people were found in one car and two others were found in another car trapped by the falling concrete in Laval.

The vehicles were crushed so badly in the collapse on Saturday afternoon that they barely reached the knees of one firefighter when lifted from under tons of concrete rubble today.

Quebec provincial police spokesman Jayson Gauthier said the victims had not been identified.

Gendron said they were certain no other vehicles had been trapped beneath the rubble and had called off the rescue operation.

Drivers on Highway 19 in the Greater Montreal Area slammed on their brakes and watched in horror as the flyover slowly collapsed, sending cars plunging and crushing at least two vehicles.

Manon Joly had just dropped her daughter off at dance school and was in her car about to drive onto Highway 19.

“I slowed down and then all of a sudden everything collapsed like a house of cards,” she said. “There were three or four cars that plunged into the hole right in front of me.”

Police said six people were injured, including two who were listed in critical condition. The six were in two cars, a minibus and on a motorcycle that all plunged from the overpass.

Doctors at Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal said some of those injured had improved overnight but gave no further details.

The cars were pulled out about 15 hours after Saturday’s dramatic lunchtime accident when a 20-yard stretch of three lanes of a viaduct collapsed, sending several other vehicles crashing onto Highway 19 below.

Firefighters and other workers had to use cranes and other heavy machinery to painstakingly break up the concrete into as many as 18 huge slabs, including a pedestrian pavement.

One of the people injured was counting his blessings today. Robert Hotte was driving over the viaduct when the road in front of him began to disappear.

“I was wondering what the … what is happening,” he said. “As we went down with the bridge, my first words were to say ‘Anne-Marie’, the name of my girlfriend. We went down, falling with the bridge. It was all dark.”

Their vehicle crashed into the debris below, landing on the passenger side window. They crawled out a window, waiting for a few minutes in a police car for an ambulance to arrive and take them to hospital.

Hotte suffered some minor injuries and was released after X-rays. His girlfriend remained in the hospital in stable condition, but she had some internal bleeding Hotte said.

One witness said that he noticed that the road sunk an inch or two when he travelled over the overpass minutes earlier, so he called emergency dispatchers.

Transport Quebec spokeswoman Josee Seguin said the flyover was built in 1970, while Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt said it had passed an inspection test last year.

Seguin said the department heard about an hour before the accident that some pieces of concrete were falling off the flyover. She added that Transport Quebec then issued an advisory to traffic reporters to mention the debris.

A Transport Quebec inspector was sent to the site about 30 minutes before the tragedy but the flyover remained open.

“It is a viaduct that had never, until now, shown any signs of weakness,” Vaillancourt said. “It wasn’t on the list of viaducts and bridges that needed to be repaired or replaced.”

It was the second serious flyover collapse in Laval in the last six years.

In 2000, a man died when a section of flyover that had been under construction for six months collapsed and eight 70-ton beams fell on the car he was riding in.

A coroner’s report later concluded a construction company did not properly secure the concrete beams, and accused the province’s construction industry of shoddy work and questionable corporate practices.