Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Man dies during 12-hour highway jam

Motorists frustrated with lack of information
1351firetruck
A fire truck races down Lorimer Road on Dec. 14, on its way to one of many storm-related calls that saw motorists stranded on Highway 99 for 12 hours. Photo by Jorge Alvarez

For Whistler residents and travellers last Thursday was the “perfect storm”.

The much-anticipated snowfall was headed our way, but so were drivers ill equipped to deal with the conditions.

In the end, when the two collided it resulted in at least two serious accidents, several smaller ones, highway slow downs and closures, which meant snowplow equipment couldn’t get in to keep the road clear and move motorists blocking traffic.

Added to that, said many of those stuck in traffic, was the lack of information they perceived they were getting from Mountain FM.

It all started around 1:45 p.m. Dec. 14 when two vehicles collided head-on near Brandywine Falls. Both drivers were seriously injured, and the highway had to close both directions for about three and a half hours as emergency services dealt with the accident.

The highway finally re-opened to single-lane traffic.

By then the snow was falling fast and furious. In total about 61 centimetres fell overnight last Thursday.

But just as it looked like traffic could get going again a semi-tractor unit with a full load of concrete jack-knifed on a slippery hill north of Brandywine Falls, blocking both lanes at around 7:30 p.m.

With vehicles lined up bumper-to-bumper it was impossible for snowplowing and sanding to take place. The highway turned into a parking lot.

Then at 9 p.m. police were told a man was suffering a heart attack in the traffic jam. Two doctors were also in the lineup and gave the yet-to-be-named 63-year-old man CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

A woman in labour and a man in respiratory distress were also stuck in the highway lineup. Following behind a snowplow, ambulances were able to get to both people and evacuate them.

But it meant that cars and trucks had to pull off the main lane and onto the snowy shoulder. Many of the vehicles were unable to get out when they were finally allowed to move, or blocked traffic once again as they tried.

It wasn’t until 11 p.m. that snowplows were able to forge through the sea of stuck vehicles and create a lane for alternating traffic at the site of the cement truck accident.

For those lucky enough to be at the front of the lineup it was then slow but smooth driving home to Whistler.

But as drivers began to flow into Whistler trouble lay ahead thanks to the undulating highway between Function Junction and the village. Soon cars were spinning out of control blocking traffic in both directions.

Close to 1 a.m. the police closed the highway at Function Junction too.

That was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for resident Andrew Ellott.

“I can live with the other things that happen on the highway, and they do get shut from time to time, but when I get to Function Junction I expect Whistler to have… (it) together,” said Ellott, who took 12 and a half hours to get from Vancouver to Whistler, most of which was spent between the Brandywine area and Function Junction.

“The really frustrating thing was to get to Function Junction, the beginning of one of the world’s greatest ski resorts, which gets two-foot dumps of snow on a regular basis, and find that you can’t get home in three hours from Function.”

Ellott hopes the RCMP uses the storm and the highway problems to look at their emergency plans.

“This will happen again,” he said adding that it was embarrassing trying to explain the situation to tourists stuck on the road alongside him.

“Obviously you speak to a lot of people in 10 hours and there were a lot of people coming to Whistler who got off airplanes and I feel the emergency services let down the resort big time.

“People were asking, ‘are you guys not used to snow?’

“People were just laughing at us. It was terribly embarrassing, as anyone coming here was amazed that we couldn’t handle this snowfall.”

Tim Ng managed to head through Whistler before the road was closed at Function and he estimates that about 50 cars littered the road.

“It was absolute carnage between Function Junction and Creekside,” he said. “There were buses and cars, there were snowdrifts up against walls.

“I saw a couple of plows coming south…, I saw one plow driver get out and put gravel under the wheels of a car that was just going sideways,” he said.

“It is just crazy people trying to do it if you are not in a vehicle that can handle it.”

RCMP Inspector Norm McPhail said police had no option but to close off the road into Whistler because of the conditions and the number of cars strewn across the lanes.

“The tow trucks were at capacity,” he said when asked to explain why the cars were not being removed from the road.

“That will be one of the parts of our debriefing, to make sure that with our towing partners if we are calling we get some sort of priority. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we do and that is an issue for us too.”

As for the chaos on the highway McPhail could only point to the intensity of the storm and the poor decisions of drivers out without snow tires or inexperienced in the conditions.

“We were stretched beyond the limit almost with the amount of responses we had to try to attend to, we had our auxiliary staff called out too,” he said.

“We were dealing with a lot of issues at the same time.”

That was something resident Dave Boyle said was apparent to everyone on the road.

“I am not going to blame anyone,” he said. “I was very impressed with the police, and the fire department, and emergency people. They had quite a task ahead of them.

“The responsibility is also on us. We have to be aware that this is a mountain road and until we get that, someone is going to get hurt.”

Both Ellott and Ng were critical of the information they heard on Mountain FM, the only station offering regular updates on the situation. While in different cars, several kilometres apart, the friends kept in contact by cell-phone.

Said Ng: “Andrew and I would have turned (back to Squamish) much earlier on if there had been better information.

“I remember at one stage they said there was going to be some snowplows coming through and the northbound traffic should get behind those snowplows. But the first time I heard that on the radio the plows had already come through half an hour beforehand.

“The updates were so out of date they were almost useless.”

Whistler’s Keith Auchinachie would like to see some sort of plan in place for information sharing when trouble hits.

From his “parked” car he phoned three sources during the highway closure and got different information.

“There were conflicting reports from (road contractor) Peter Kiewit, the RCMP and Mountain FM about the highway being closed and nothing moving,” said Auchinachie, who took close to eight hours to get home from Squamish.

He too contemplated turning back but at one point he was told that traveling south was not a good option because of downed branches due to high winds.

“I was listening intently to Mountain FM and they were absolutely pathetic.

“I needed information. Mountain FM claims to be the information station… for the Sea to Sky corridor yet the information they were providing was every 20 minutes, but I think in an emergency highway situation every time that DJ starts talking about Christmas specials he should also be putting the news out there too.”

He would also like to see a road check set up as early as Horseshoe Bay to make sure no one is allowed on the highway without winter tires.

Mountain FM’s Ted Ballantyne said staff worked hours of overtime trying to keep drivers informed, giving updates on the air until after 1 a.m. rather than stopping around 10 p.m. as usual.

“People were upset that we were saying the same thing but if the situation doesn’t change then we can’t change what we are reporting either,” he said.

“I definitely think we went above and beyond what we would normally do and obviously we have to because people need to know what is going on and that is why we kept someone here until we heard the road was going to be open.”

Whistler Councillor Eckhard Zeidler, who also got stuck on the highway for hours, said the municipality is looking at the road situation very seriously following Thursday’s chaos. (See related story on page 15.)

“I acknowledge that it is a mountain highway and I acknowledge that it was a large snowfall… but we absolutely have to have appropriate services to deal with that reality,” he said.

“I don’t have enough information to say there was a failure on the part of anybody, but what I do know is that we will be looking into it. From a councilor point of view we are taking this very, very seriously.”

Zeidler also found that the storm, while a terrible night for many brought out the best in human nature in some.

“What I saw was very positive,” he said.

“There was a honey-mooning couple from Oregon who opened up their trunk and were distributing their groceries.”

He also saw a frustrated tow truck driver help a limousine driver discover he had chains and then put them on.

“It was a terrible night for many people but I really saw people coming together and really help each other out and stay calm in the absence of information.”