A portion of Highway 400 near Bradford remained closed late Wednesday afternoon following a deadly multi-vehicle collision that caused a massive explosion Tuesday night, killing at least three people.

Police said the number of fatalities was expected to rise as first responders combed through the burned-out wreckage of some 14 vehicles.

“We continue to work on identifying the victims inside the vehicles,” Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said from the scene. “We are in the process of separating some of the vehicles to get a better look inside to see how many more victims that have maybe not yet been identified.”

OPP said the fiery crash happened around 11:30 p.m. between County Rd. 88 and Hwy. 89. Schmidt said 14 vehicles were involved in the crash, including two fully loaded fuel tankers and three transport trucks.

Schmidt said the crash occurred about an hour after another collision, about one kilometre up the road, which involved three vehicles and had slowed the traffic along the highway. He said one of the fuel tankers approaching the area where traffic had slowed appeared to have crashed through other vehicles, setting off a chain reaction.





“The sky was clear, it was dark, obviously, at the time . . . no issues on the road surface for visibility,” Schmidt said, adding police will be looking at possible mechanical issues as well as any possible human factors.

The fuel tankers exploded on impact, Schmidt said. Video footage from the scene posted on social media showed towering flames and explosions.

“It is absolutely a devastating scene. It is something I’ve never seen in my career,” Schmidt said of the crash site, which had twisted metal and unrecognizable debris scattered across the highway.

Ontario police say several people are dead after a fiery 14-vehicle pileup. The Highway 400 crash sent a wave of flames that forced drivers to run for their lives.

Due to the massive blaze, Schmidt said investigators are having difficulty identifying the victims and collecting evidence.

“We’re dealing with a massive scene . . . fire, explosions, and just absolute carnage and devastation,” Schmidt said. “The temperatures that were achieved in this crash were apocalyptic.”

All lanes of Hwy. 400 were closed in both directions between County Rd. 88 and Hwy. 89. Closures will likely last until Thursday morning, Schmidt said.

The intense heat may have also damaged the highway. Schmidt said it may need repaving before it will be open traffic.

Schmidt said several people were taken to hospital. Their injuries are considered non life-threatening.

Witnesses told police that some people were seen running away from the scene as the “wall of fire” consumed all the vehicles. Schmidt said it took emergency services at least 2 ½ hours to extinguish the fire. He added that “fire departments from every service in the region” teamed up to tame the blaze.

Luba Zariczny was travelling south on Hwy. 400 toward her home in Mississauga when she arrived at the scene about five minutes after the explosion.

“I could see fuel tankers as well as multiple vehicles completely engulfed in flames and a lot of them completely burnt up,” Zariczny told the Star. “There was a lot of black smoke covering the sky.”

She decided to pull over to make a video of the fiery crash.

“It was frightening,” Zariczny said. “I felt pain for the people and families that were involved.”

Paul Novosad, a freelance photographer who observed first responders battling the blaze, counted about 26 fire trucks swarming over the scene in what he described as a well co-ordinated effort.

“The fire was just spectacular. It kept blowing up, the diesel,” he said. “The heat must have been incredible.”

OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes visited the crash site and said the collision could have been 100 times worst based on the devastation he have seen.

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“It is a miracle that we don’t have 25 lives, 25 bodies down there,” Hawkes said.

According to preliminary information he received, the driver of the truck that smashed into a queue of vehicles never stopped. He said the portion of the highway, where it happened, is straight and going downhill so there is no reason for the driver to not slow down.

“These trucks are, in essence, missiles travelling down the highway,” said Hawkes. “The trend seems to be getting worse.”

The OPP will work with the public, transportation ministry, and the trucking industry to push and to enhance their strategy to prevent a collision with this magnitude from happening, Hawkes said.

At Queen’s Park, Progressive Conservative MPP Michael Harris (Kitchener-Conestoga) called on the province to set up a task force of experts to investigate ways to cut down on the number of “preventable” deadly crashes on 400-series highways.

“People are becoming more and more nervous getting on the highway,” Harris told reporters, calling on the government to table promised legislation with increased penalties for careless and distracted driving.

“We need to up our game on enforcement.”

Premier Kathleen Wynne expressed her condolences to the victims’ families, calling the accident “a horrible, horrible tragedy.”

“We will in the aftermath of this collision, obviously we will look at what happened, we will be advised on whether there’s more that could have been done to prevent such a crash,” she said.

“Any death on the highway that is preventable should be prevented. And so we will continue to work to make sure that we do everything that is possible to prevent this kind of tragedy happening again.”

Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said motorists need to use common sense and that involves “leaving a safe distance between yourself and the vehicle in front of you. You shouldn’t be distracted at any point in time you should be focused on the task at hand and obeying the rules of the road.”

He called the fiery Hwy. 400 crash Tuesday night “particularly horrific.”

The stretch of the highway where the crash happened has been under construction for months.

As recently as last week, provincial police were highlighting the dangerous nature of accidents involving commercial transport trucks.

The force said it has responded to more than 5,000 such collisions this year, with 67 people killed. In the two previous years, OPP tracked 13,668 crashes involving commercial transport trucks that killed a total of 155 people.

The Ontario Trucking Association said last week that the industry is committed to road safety, noting that there has been a 66 per cent decrease in the fatality rate from large truck collisions between 1995 and 2014 despite a 75 per cent rise in large truck vehicle registrations.

Mike Millian of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada said the public should avoid jumping into conclusions on the cause of the crash. But he said the trucking industry is working with all their partners in creating a safety plan.

“We as an industry, no matter whose at fault, need to do whatever we can to work together with the MTO, with the police, and with the general public to do what we can to make sure our roadways are safe,” Millian said.

The OPP recommends that drivers use Yonge St. and Hwy. 27 as alternate routes during the closure.

With files from Rob Ferguson, Robert Benzie and The Canadian Press