Six people have died in a suburb of the Canadadian capital Ottawa after a bus collided with a train. It is believed the vehicle went through closed barriers at a level crossing 12 miles south of the city.
Six other injuries have been reported so far. Ottawa Police said that five passengers travelling on the bus had been killed and that a number of passengers were injured.
He said there were no injuries on the Via Rail passenger train but all of Ottawa's first responders were sent to the scene. The accident happened just outside a suburban train station in the city's west end at around 8.45am local time, the middle of the morning commute.
Pascal Lolgis, who witnessed the crash, said the bus appeared to drive through a lowered crossing barrier.
"Boom! It went into the train like that. He just didn't stop."
A second witness, Mark Cogan, said the rail barrier had been down but the bus carried on travelling.
"The train is going through and I was just looking around, just watching things happen. And noticed that in the bus lane, the double-decker bus ... I saw him, and he just kept going. I just thought maybe there's a side way around or something, but instantly, he just...he smoked the train. He went through the guard rail and just hammered the train, and then it was just mayhem."
The train tracks in the area cross both a major city road and a transit line reserved solely for buses.
Transportation Safety Board of Canada spokesman Chris Krepski tells CBC News Network investigation could take as long as a year.
He said "Obviously we'll let the first responders do their work. Once their work is complete we'll start to take a closer look at the accident scene, document the wreckage, take some photos of the wreckage. We'll also take a very close look at the crossing design, what the sightlines were at the crossing, whether or not any kind of warning or protection systems at the crossing were working".
"We'll also examine the data from the locomotive event recorder, similar to a black box on an aircraft, which documents what controls were being used at the time of the crash."
The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed his condolences in a message on Twitter:
Deeply saddened to hear about the bus-train collision in Ottawa this morning. Our thoughts & prayers are w/ the families of those involved.
— Stephen Harper (@pmharper) September 18, 2013
