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VIDEO UPDATE: Whiskey Creek collision injures two

Tuesday morning incident delays motorists on Highway 4
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(Twitter/James Anderson)

Two people were taken to hospital with minor injuries following a collision on Highway 4 that left traffic backed up in both directions for more than an hour Tuesday morning, July 18, west of Qualicum Beach.

An air ambulance was flown in and took one patient, while a second occupant of the same vehicle was taken by ground ambulance, said Aaron Poirier, chief of the Coombs-Hilliers Volunteer Fire Department.

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Video courtesy of Bev Carlisle

First responders were called at 9:50 a.m. Tuesday with reports of a crash near the Qualicum Beach Trading Post in Whiskey Creek. Poirier said firefighters arrived to find one vehicle in the trees on the north side of the highway.

“Members of the Coombs-Hillers Fire Department attended and extracted one patient,” he said.

The second vehicle was “clipped,” according to both Poirier and the Oceanside RCMP, and continued along the roadway before it pulled over. The occupants of that car were uninjured, Poirier said.

Traffic was stopped briefly for the air ambulance, then allowed to proceed in alternating, single-lane fashion. Westbound traffic was backup up nearly to Coombs Junction, while eastbound motorists were lined up alongside Cameron Lake.

“It wasn’t as serious as initially thought,” said an RCMP spokesperson. “There was nothing to suspect anything criminal in nature. One person was airlifted with minor injuries; paramedics said it was precautionary.”

Neither Poirier nor the RCMP spokesperson were able to say which direction(s) the vehicles involved had been traveling, or how they collided. One witness said the crashed vehicle was travelling eastbound from Port Alberni toward Coombs Junction.

Traffic resumed moving in both directions at about 11:30 a.m., though some delays resulted from the backup.

NEWS Staff

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The vehicle incident is four kilometres west of the Coombs Junction. — DriveBC map