One woman was killed and another was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries after a tree crashed down on a garden party attended by several people in east Toronto last night.
Emergency crews were called to a house on Ledge Rd., near the intersection of McCowan and Kingston Rds., around 9:15 p.m., said Duty Officer Connie Christie with Toronto Emergency Medical Services.
Police do not know why a willow tree fell down on the party, trapping two women.
One woman, 65, was pronounced dead at the scene, while another, 78, was freed and rushed to Sunnybrook hospital with severe injuries to her head, back and chest. Two men were taken to a Scarborough hospital with minor injuries.
"It's just tragic," said Sgt. Peter Laufer, after speaking to a daughter of one of the victims, who appeared too distraught to talk.
Neighbour Shirley Stephan said the noise "sounded like a clanging."
"I was in the house, that's how loud it was."
The area has been noisy with construction and Stephan assumed the sound was a just a consequence of the repairs going on.
David Merritt, who also lives nearby, believes recent severe weather may have weakened some neighbourhood trees.
Merritt said the tree that fell had appeared to have been dead for some time.
A pilot with the ballooning company involved in a fatal accident in Surrey, B.C., says its operations have been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into the incident.
John Kageorge says the probe needs to determine how a fire broke out in the balloon's gondola.
Two people were killed Friday when a sunset balloon ride turned into a disaster. Another 11 people were hurt when they were forced to jump from the flaming balloon.
Kageorge says the pilot remains very shaken by the incident.
The flaming balloon crashed on an RV park, destroying several of the camper vehicles.
Witnesses watched in horror as the balloon burst into flames and plummeted to the ground in suburban Surrey, unleashing an inferno of exploding propane tanks.
Three of the injured remain in a New Westminster hospital and one was transferred to Vancouver General's burn unit.
A typical ride begins with passengers helping to fill the balloon, or envelope, using huge fans to drive air in. Then, the air is heated with propane heaters, which will be used later in the trip to keep it aloft.
"Hot-air balloons do not contain a big bag of gas over the heads of passengers," said Kageorge, a veteran balloon pilot. "There's nothing but air there. We heat it and that's what allows the balloon to lift."
Below the envelope hangs the basket. In the case of the balloon that went down in B.C., the basket had five compartments with a pilot's cockpit in the middle.
The propane tanks for heating the air during the flight are also in the cockpit, Kageorge said.
Both the balloon pilot and the balloon must be licensed by the federal government.
Transport Canada spokesperson Rod Nelson said the Transportation Safety Board and B.C.'s provincial coroner may make recommendations to Transport Canada, but he said balloon accidents of this magnitude are very rare.
"I don't recall in the 28 years I've worked for Transport Canada a balloon crash with fatalities like this, at least in B.C.," Nelson said.
Friday's tragedy comes two weeks after a hot-air balloon carrying a dozen passengers crash-landed in a farmer's field north of Winnipeg, badly burning two people.
They had come from all over North America for the wedding and as the large extended family of the Sikh bride and groom celebrated, the banging of drums echoed across the dark farmland along Lefeuvre Road, in Abbotsford.
The screams would come later, and then the wails of ambulances and the thud of helicopters would shatter the quiet rural atmosphere as the flashing lights of police cars illuminated the scene of one of the worst traffic accidents in British Columbia's history.
In its wake, in a sad and determined affirmation of life yesterday, the wedding went ahead as planned, as the close-knit Indo-Canadian community in Abbotsford struggled to balance the joy of a marriage against the grief of a shocking tragedy.
At 11 p.m. Friday it was all happiness as about 30 friends and family of the bride, Harsimran Mahil, and the groom, Jarnail Grewal, went walking house to house, beating drums, ringing bells and singing traditional songs in a ceremony, known as a jaggo, that was meant to literally wake people up and get them to join the celebrations.
Family and friends share a moment Sunday outside the Sikh temple in Mission, B.C., after the wedding of Harsimran Mahil and Jarnail Grewal. (Rafal Gerszak For The Globe And Mail)
At about the same time a 71-year-old Indo-Canadian man from Langley, whose identity has not yet been released by police, stopped at a local gas station to fuel up his white, 1981 Chevy pickup, with two black stripes on the hood. He was on his way home from working late at a plant in Abbotsford and after he pulled away from the pumps he went south on Lefeuvre Road, unaware that up ahead, just over the crest of a small hill, the wedding celebrants had spilled out into the night and onto the pavement.
Lefeuvre Road, a secondary truck route through rural Abbotsford with a speed limit of 60 kilometres an hour, is lined by trees, blueberry fields and sheep paddocks. The darkness along it is broken only here and there by pools of yellow light from a scattering of farm houses, most set well back from the two-lane road.
The wedding celebrants had just left one house and had begun walking south, back to the home of Avtar Mahil, the father of the bride, where party tents were set out in the expansive yard, when the truck came up behind them.
The group, which did not include the bride and groom, was walking along the right side of the road and although one witness said some were in a sloping ditch that runs parallel to the pavement, others were on the narrow gravel shoulder and some were on the road, in the path of the oncoming truck.
Suddenly headlights pierced the darkness and then the truck, driven by an elderly man with a long, white beard, went smashing into the procession, sending people flying off the hood and dragging several of them with the undercarriage into the ditch, killing six and injuring 17, including two babies.
Three men and three women ranging from 13 to 50 died.
Five of the victims have been identified by Harjinder Thind, the news director for Red 93.1FM, a Punjabi radio station, as Damanpreet Singh Kang, 13, Rubal Kaur, 22, Bhupinder Singh Kaler, 24, Rapduman Singh Dhillan, 25 and Satinder Kaur Mahil, 50. A sixth victim has not yet been identified. Mr. Thind said he talked briefly with the driver of the truck, but "he was too shook up to say much."
The wedding procession began at Avtar Mahil's house and proceeded to the house of Shamsher Mahil, a friend of Mr. Mahil's who grew up in the same Indian village that he did. After about 30 minutes, the procession left to return to Avtar Mahil's house when the accident occurred.
Abbotsford City Councillor Moe Gill, who arrived at Mr. Mahil's house Saturday morning, said he has known the bride's family for 25 years.
He said one of the deceased women was the bride's aunt, Satinder Mahil, who had been at his house for a party just two weeks ago.
"They're in shock. Their mother was just killed last night," he said about Ms. Mahil's three grown children. "It wasn't good when you go in there ... The emotion was out of control."
Avtar Dosanjh, who also arrived on Lefeuvre Road Saturday morning to pay his respects, said he also knew Ms. Mahil.
"She was very, very nice. This whole thing is just really, very sad."Police said 14 area ambulances and two Medevac helicopters from Vancouver Airport were called to transport the injured and seven area hospitals were put on a Code Orange alert, clearing ER space to handle the victims.
According to Sergeant Amar Kingra, of the Abbotsford Police, nine people remained in hospital yesterday, with two in intensive-care units. A four-month-old was released, but a seven-month-old remains in critical but stable condition.
Several of the victims were from the United States and two were from Toronto.
The 71-year-old truck driver was released from police custody after several hours of questioning. Sgt. Kingra said he has been extremely co-operative. Drugs and alcohol have been ruled out as factors, and Sgt. Kingra said there is currently no indication that speed or weather conditions played any role, either.
Constable Casey Vinet suggested the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel, but that has not been confirmed.
"At this time, there's no charges being proposed or considered until we get our full, complete investigation done including mechanical inspection on the vehicle to find out what went wrong there," he said.
Sgt. Kingra said the police will be interviewing the surviving members of the accident after they have had time to grieve.
Most of the people on the road were women and children who are related to the bride.
Darren Franson and his wife Ester, who live in a house just at the crest of the hill, were watching television at 11:15 p.m. when they heard a "horrendous sound," out on the road. They knew it was a vehicle striking something - but they never imagined it had run into a wall of people.
Moments later their 11-year-old daughter, Rachel, bolted into the living room to tell them the truck had hit the wedding procession.
"She was standing at her bedroom window watching the parade go by when the truck just came up and went plowing right into them ... people just went flying," he said.
"After that it was chaos," he said. "The screaming was unbelievable."
Mr. Franson said a large crowd of people went running to the scene from the house that the procession had just left, and soon there were more than 100 people on the road.
"There were a lot of people there helping, doing what they could, but the screaming went on until the ambulances arrived," he said. "It's hard to describe."
Jaskaran Mahil, who is in Grade 6, told The Canadian Press that he was at the front of the procession with his parents when the truck hit.
"People started yelling and I ran," he said. "Two seconds, probably later, the truck was [there] and I was unconscious."
Yesterday a cluster of half a dozen bundles of flowers marked the accident site, but otherwise it looked just like any other stretch of quiet country road, except for a few tattered pieces of emergency-scene tape in the ditch.
