CALGARY — Three people were killed and 19 were injured Thursday after a chain-reaction collision involving two Calgary Transit buses and other vehicles in the city’s northeast, authorities said.

Emergency crews were called at approximately 1:11 p.m. Mountain time on October 15 to the 800 block of Saddletowne Circle N.E. after a reported vehicle fire involving a city bus. The location is near Saddletowne station.

The Associated Press reported that two transit buses caught fire after the crash. Calgary police said three people were declared dead. Among the injured, one person suffered life-altering injuries and another was seriously injured. A police officer who responded to the scene was also taken to hospital with minor injuries.

Crash sequence remains under investigation

Calgary Transit confirmed that two of its buses collided. Reporting by CityNews and AP described a broader chain-reaction crash involving other vehicles, but investigators had not announced a final cause when this article was published.

Images from the scene showed extensive fire damage. Those images establish the scale of the emergency response, but they do not determine how the collision began or what caused the fire.

Police closed access to Saddletowne Circle while collision investigators, firefighters and transit officials worked at the scene. Authorities asked the public to avoid the area and said a full investigation would examine the collision and any safety changes that may be required.

What remains unknown

Officials had not publicly identified the people killed or said whether they were passengers, transit employees or occupants of other vehicles. They also had not established whether fuel systems on either bus contributed to the fire.

The injury count may be described differently across early reports because some authorities counted everyone assessed while others reported only those taken to hospital. The 19-person figure is the latest total reported by AP from emergency authorities; ten people were transported by ambulance.

This is a developing story. Any finding about driver conduct, vehicle condition or the origin of the fire requires confirmation from investigators.

Sources

Lead image: Saddletowne Station in Calgary, photographed May 24, 2022, by Uzoma Ozurumba / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. The image is geographic context and does not depict the October 15 collision.