About 1,000 vehicles were trapped on the Coquihalla Highway between Merritt and Hope last night due to freezing rain that caused multiple accidents and closed the road twice in a six hour period.
Passenger vehicles were slowly let through northbound and southbound, and the highway reopened at 2 p.m. today (Feb. 10).
Mike Lorimer, Ministry of Transportation regional director for the Southern Interior, told the Herald an estimated 50 to 100 passenger vehicles were still stuck on the highway as of about 10 o’clock this morning.
The Ministry sent food, fuel and water to those forced to spend the night on the highway.
“That’s something we’ve been doing as soon as we could get access to it,” Lorimer said, adding that traffic congestion and icy conditions made it difficult to get to people deep in the lineups.
He said maintenance crews are busy today trying move more traffic through, get plow trucks cycling on the road and laying down sand.
Lorimer said the priority overnight was trying to get passenger vehicles through in both directions.
“What we chose to do was just get the passenger vehicles moving because [given] the conditions we were really worried that as soon as we released the commercial vehicles we’d have jackknifed situations again,” Lorimer said.
Coquitlam resident Jaime (who did not wish to give her last name) was driving with her family yesterday afternoon on a skiing trip to Kelowna, when she got caught in traffic between Hope and Merritt after the highway reopened at 4 p.m.
“The road — when I stepped out of [my] truck — it was like an ice rink. I could have put skates on,” she said.
The Ministry of Transportation initially closed the Coquihalla Highway at about noon yesterday due to freezing rain that caused multiple semi-trucks to jackknife and block the highway.
By 4 p.m. the decision was made to reopen the highway after having cleared the road surface and letting the backlogged traffic through.
Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon and Highway 3 between Hope and Princeton were closed yesterday morning due to avalanche precautions.
“With all the highways to the Interior closed it was important to us to get a route through,” said Lorimer.
The forecast didn’t call for anything of too much concern, Lorimer said, noting that it called for about 10 to 15 centimetres of snow with a little bit of rain.
However, that wasn’t the case.
“What we ended up with instead was, rather than that snowfall, we got really intense freezing rain, particularly in there Larson Hill area,” Lorimer said. “We ended up with very, very icy conditions very quickly and sustained — that rainfall continued for hours.”
Lorimer said the freezing rain resulted in multiple semi-trucks jackknifing and blocking the highway, which forced it’s closure again.
“The rain kept going, [it] kept getting icier, and with those blockages we couldn’t get the plows cycling around and we ended up in the unfortunate situation we were in last night with the highway closed and the folks trapped,” he said.
Jaime said she and her family were stuck in traffic for hours, but eventually maneuvered around parked semi-trucks and crawled northbound, arriving in Merritt at about 1:30 in the morning. They have since made it to their destination safely.
Multiple highways between the Lower Mainland and the southern Interior remained closed this morning.
As of 1:30 p.m. today Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon remained closed due to avalanche concerns. Highway 3 between Hope and Princeton and Highway 5A north of Princeton were closed due to avalanche concerns as well, but have since reopened.
