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Feb 11, 2021 9:23 PM -
RCMP say a south Okanagan man in his 40s and his dog died in yesterday's crash on the Coquihalla Highway just outside Hope that closed the route for 12 hours.
Corporal Mike Halskov says the chain-reaction collision began when a semi-trailer stopped in the northbound lanes of Highway 5 in the S-curves and was hit from behind as the unnamed victim lost control of his pickup truck on the icy road.
Halskov says about 50 people in at least two dozen vehicles, one of them a bus, were involved in the pileup and five people suffered significant injuries but only one person with broken bones remains in hospital.
The RCMP say by the time an officer arrived, a pickup truck had collided with the stopped tractor-trailer, which resulted in "a cascading, chain-reaction collision" involving at least two dozen vehicles including a bus.One of the first officers at the scene is recovering after he was hurt when his cruiser was hit by a jackknifed transport truck and Halskov says severe road and weather contributed to the crash, along with vehicles travelling too quickly for the conditions.
