One of the two men killed in a fiery crash in Vaughan on Highway 407 on Wednesday has been identified as a 41-year-old father of five from Brampton.
Community members identified the man as Mahad “Barre” Adan on Thursday.
Adan, who was driving the tanker truck, and an unidentified 49-year-old male driver of a passenger vehicle were both pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, which police have called a "crossover-type of collision."
The passenger vehicle was “swept up” by the tanker truck that abruptly veered across Highway 407 during rush hour, Ontario Provincial Police said Thursday.
For reasons now under investigation, the truck veered across several lanes of traffic, swiping a driver travelling next to it, before barreling into the median.
“The fuel tanker somehow lost control and veered across all lanes, from the right side to the left,” OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said Thursday.
“It swept up this other vehicle that was travelling next to it, pushing it into the guardrail, pushing it up over the guardrail, and they both ended up on the eastbound side.”
Previously, police thought the passenger vehicle involved in the collision was travelling on the opposite side of the highway. The investigation has since determined otherwise, Schmidt said.
“In fact, both vehicles -- the fuel tanker as well as the other passenger vehicle -- were both traveling westbound,” he said.
The fuel tanker, carrying diesel, quickly became engulfed in flames.
Thick black plumes of smoke billowed from the crash site and drifted throughout the Dufferin and Keele streets area.
The cloud could be seen kilometres away and as far as downtown Toronto.
No other injuries were reported.
“It is a miracle that there were no other injuries or fatalities,” Schmidt said in the aftermath Wednesday.
“This could’ve been far more significant based on the fireball that we saw exploding, even as I arrived.”
A number of emergency crews were called to the chaotic scene, and it took several hours for Vaughan Fire Services to put out the blaze.
The situation forced police to close a stretch of both the east and westbound lanes, leaving many motorists stranded on the highway for hours.
The clean-up and investigation stretched well into the evening. The roadway was badly damaged, Schmidt said, and needed to be repaved.
Police cleared the area for traffic by approximately 6 a.m. on Thursday.
“You can still see the blackened, scorched concrete wall. Half of it is pitted all out from the damage,” Schmidt said. “The highway has been resurfaced. They’re just cleaning up some of the remaining diesel that spilled out of the fuel tanker to the environment below. That work is still going on.”
Robert Kostiuk was heading home from work, a short distance behind the truck, when the crash unfolded.
“I was talking with my friend on the phone when all of a sudden I saw the truck go perpendicular to the way our traffic was going,” he told CTV News Toronto.
“The truck ended up hitting the median, it flipped over and immediately burst into flames.”
Kostiuk captured the ordeal on his dashboard camera.
He said he was eventually able to pass the “insane fireball” and get home safely.
“As I was passing by, I could feel the heat from inside my car,” he said.
While the investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing, Brian Patterson of the Ontario Safety League said the company operating the tanker truck, 4Refuel, has a “good record.”
“To carry fuel, you require skilled drivers and your insurance would be in the highest bracket. So you’re doing everything to reduce your insurance, whether it’s additional training for drivers, screening mechanical issues,” Patterson told CTV News Toronto.
“I think this is an example of a good company caught up in a bad incident.”
4Refuel has not yet commented on the incident.
Schmidt, meanwhile, said officers are looking at a mechanical defect as the primary factor behind the crash.
“Maybe it was a tire failure, a deflation, a suspension issue that may have caused the vehicle to pull to the right,” he said.
“I have seen these in the past, where you lose a steering axle or a tire, that amount of drag can pull the truck over immediately without any response from driver. You’re just not able to control vehicles when you lose steering axle. It’s something we’re looking into, we haven’t concluded that yet.”
Patterson, however, expressed doubts about that theory.
“I’d be shocked if it roots back to mechanical problems within that company,” he said.
Patterson renewed his calls for a coroner’s review into fatal crashes involving transport trucks on the province’s 400-series highways.
The Ontario Safety League first put out the request one year ago today, in the aftermath of a devastating crash on Highway 400 near Barrie.
The similarly fiery crash, described at the time as “apocalyptic,” left three people dead.
Patterson said he hopes the coroner could advise the government on best practices to prevent future highway crashes involving commercial vehicles.
