Initial reports that Highway 97 was bare when a fatal accident occurred Thursday morning are being disputed by truck drivers on the road at the time. And investigators have also amended their earlier statements to say there may have been moisture.
A black ice patch is now reported to have been on the road at the spot where SUV driver Matt Altizer mysteriously deviated from his lane into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. All five people in the vehicle died. The truck driver sustained non-life threatening injuries.
The crash occurred near the communities of Macalister and McLeese Lake sometime before 9 a.m. The Altizers were on their way to Vancouver. Witnesses told police their vehicle had been proceeding normally until it suddenly crossed the centre line.
Neal Cook, a chip truck driver, was in the line of halted vehicles that couldn't get past the crash scene. He was close enough to the front to observe almost everything of the fiery aftermath.
"I've driven that road for over nine years, five days a week," he told The Citizen. "I know it quite well, and you know when there's trouble. I was very, very close to sliding in that area and I discussed it with the next truck behind me. He said he spun [tires] going around that corner."
The roads were reportedly bare and dry, said police following the crash. Cook said most of it was, but as the early morning sun warmed the pavement, it became wet. In the shadows, he said, the warm air and cold frost made a treacherous sheen of ice.
"The guys complained, that morning, and the guys don't usually complain," said Frank Thompson, another trucker who does that route routinely. "They are all used to this road, and they all noted it was in bad condition. Slippery. The temperatures do change here quite drastically, and they came into it unexpectedly. The rest of the roads weren't too bad until they hit that corner."
Some drivers reported crashes that same morning at other spots in the same area. Police were checking on the overall conditions as of deadline.
The investigation is still underway.
