WARNING: This story contains some graphic details about a highway collision with an animal.
A stretch of Highway 11 in Saskatchewan was left covered in blood and debris on Thursday evening after a moose was struck and killed by four vehicles, prompting a cleanup a fire chief says was made even more hazardous by vehicles that didn’t slow down while passing the scene.
Saskatchewan RCMP say a semi-truck travelling northbound hit the moose about two kilometres north of Hanley. Two pickup trucks and an SUV then struck the animal shortly afterwards, around 7 p.m.
Les Kroeger, chief of the Hanley Rosedale Fire Department, says it was a busy evening on the highway connecting Regina and Saskatchewan, and the vehicles that came after the initial impact kept hitting the remains of the moose.
The occupants of the vehicles involved in the collision weren’t injured. The semi was intact, but all three smaller vehicles were damaged, with two totalled after the crash, according to RCMP and Kroeger.
Elise Brass says she drove by the crash in the one northbound lane that was cleared after police, ambulance and fire crews had already arrived. She slowed down to around 30 km/h to pass the emergency vehicles, she said.
When she drew closer, she said she saw what appeared to be a large dead animal, or several, that had been “obliterated.”
“I was trying not to run over these animals,” she said, noting that she also saw flames near some of the debris.
The volunteer fire department and RCMP worked to clean up the vehicles and the animal’s remains from the road in order to keep one northbound lane open, Kroeger said.
The department gets as many as 20 calls per year for crashes with animals, usually deer, but it’s unusual to see so many vehicles involved, he said.
Kroeger says many drivers, unlike Brass, continued to fly by the scene in the open lane at speeds around 110 km/h, even though the law requires them to slow down to 60 km/h to pass emergency vehicles.
“People were not slowing down. They weren’t yielding to the emergency vehicles,” Kroeger told CBC on Friday.
“And it puts all of our members at risk when we’re out there ensuring public safety and making sure the roadway gets cleared of debris and that the people in the vehicles didn’t sustain any injuries, trying to help out as best we can.”
He says it’s an issue in other rural fire departments, many of which are also volunteer-run, but the need to slow down doesn’t seem to sink in with some members of the public.
He urged drivers to slow down to 60 km/h or less when they see emergency lights flashing on the highway.
“They’re intent on getting to their destination, and I respect that everybody has got busy lives. But at the same time, we’re out there trying to do our job too,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s ambulance, fire or RCMP, there’s a certain amount of respect that has to be paid.”