Two people were sent to hospital with minor injuries after a single vehicle veered off Highway 19 southbound and crashed into the ditch just north of the Highway 19A interchange in Parksville Tuesday morning, June 6.
Single-lane traffic on Highway 19 south has traffic backed up as first responders mop up and wait for a tow truck to remove the Kia Rondo SUV from its nose-in position in the ditch.
A woman driver and two passengers were in the vehicle when it abruptly swerved from the left lane across highway to crash into the ditch. The car was heavily damaged on the passenger side where it struck, and the impact left debris strewn up the embankment.
“There were three people in the vehicle; minor injuries,” said Mike Tisdelle, assistant fire chief with the Parksville Volunteer Fire Department. “It looks like they’ll probably all be checked over and released.”
Oceanside RCMP, BC Ambulance service and Parksville Volunteer Fire Department personnel responded to the incident, which occurred about 10:30 a.m. Tisdelle said the RCMP were investigating, but from the initial report he received it appeared the SUV may have struck the centre concrete divider on the highway before swerving to the ditch where the road bends to the right around a hill.
“Maybe it rolled; I’m not sure,” he said. “The biggest concern with this one was oncoming traffic, because of the location, on the corner. I had two pedestrians slowing up traffic around the corner. Traffice was moving pretty fast so I was worried of another incident.
“I checked with the three occupants and made sure no one was seriously injured, then I moved my truck back about a hundred feet to slow traffic down.”
The hometown(s) of the occupants is not yet known.
Earlier in the morning, Parksville Fire Department responded to another incident on Highway 19A in Parksville, near Paradise Mini-golf. That was a rear-end collision that left one victim at Oceanside Health Centre for observation, said Tisdelle.