Steven Hill
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Sea to Sky corridor RCMP and highway officials are still looking over procedure and discussing ways to avoid long highway delays, which result from fatal motor vehicle accidents.
Cpl. Dave Ritchie of the local detachment said meetings were still being held to examine why Hwy. 99 ended up closed for an eight-hour period Feb. 11, following a three-motorcycle accident, which claimed the life of a 31-year-old man.
"It is unacceptable to keep the highway closed for that length of time," Ritchie said. "We have been having meetings, and more are planned. We are treating this very seriously and we are hoping for improvements."
He said many things factored into the long closure, including difficulties getting accident analysts and reconstructionists on-scene.
"Our specialist didn't get there until about 4 p.m.," said Ritchie.
The accident originally occurred at 12:45 p.m.
"He lives in the Lower Mainland, had to be paged, go to his home, then go to the detachment for his gear," said Ritchie. "Then he had to get through all the traffic and construction to get to the scene."
But Ritchie said fatal accidents on the highway had to be investigated and analysed properly.
"We have, on average, about six or seven fatalities on that highway each year," he said. "Of those, two or three get treated as criminal investigations.
"We have to gather all the evidence on the highway after a fatality," he said. "Points of impact and lines of travel have to be established. You can't just take a couple measurements and sweep it all to the side of the road."
However, Ritchie said RCMP were looking at methods to gather evidence more quickly, and ways to get analysts or specialists on-scene faster.
"We have looked at helicopters, although we don't know how feasible that is" he said. "We are also looking at getting a reconstructionist here. It is just a matter of staffing."
Police are also looking into ways to use poor weather barricades along the highway as a way to contain the scene and prevent more cars from getting into the kind of gridlock seen Feb. 11.
Ritchie said along with being frustrating for those without food, water and bathrooms, it was a potentially dangerous situation."Of course people needed to get out and stretch, but we also saw kids skateboarding along the highway to pass the time or playing Frisbee," he said. "If traffic got moving, you would have had people trying to cross traffic to get back to their cars, and it would have been a dangerous situation."
He said taking a hard look at what mistakes were made now, may prevent a long delay in the future, but RCMP would still continue to fully investigate every fatal crash, regardless.
"We are concerned about what happened," he said. "We certainly don't want a repeat. But, you also can't tell a policeman not to do his job."
