Last week, a tour bus accident on the Canadian side of the Klondike Highway temporarily shut down the mountain pass and delayed the start of the Klondike Road Relay race. Canadian and U.S. first responders worked together to rescue and triage 25 tourists.

 

At approximately 3 p.m. on Aug. 6, a Chilkoot Charters and Tours bus from Skagway went off the side of the Klondike Highway. Skagway’s borough manager Brad Ryan rushed to the site at Kilometer 52, a 35-minute drive from town. He brought a Starlink device to assist with communication.

He says the crash involved one vehicle with multiple passengers.

“It was one bus that went off the road and appears to have tipped over,” Ryan says.

Two Holland America Princess motor coaches were among the first vehicles to respond. They helped provide communication, and medical personnel on board the coaches began to triage accident victims as they waited for first responders to arrive.

Yukon EMS held incident command with support from Mount Lorne Fire Department and Carcross medical staff. Skagway sent a fire truck, an ambulance, three fire personnel and two nurses from Dahl Memorial Clinic.

Skagway’s fire chief, Emily Rauscher, stayed in town at the public safety building to ensure someone would be available in case of additional, unrelated emergency calls.

“My biggest concern was that we were going to go 40 miles out of town, and we are getting these simultaneous calls, and we were going to leave Skagway 100% non-protected for an extended period of time,” she says.

One person was medevaced from the accident scene by helicopter. Ten declined to visit Skagway’s clinic and were returned to their cruise ship. Eight individuals were taken to Dahl Memorial Clinic. All other victims were transported into Whitehorse for medical care.

Although there were no fatalities, this was considered a mass casualty incident. Rauscher explained the medical meaning of the word.

“It’s when you have multiple people that are injured,” she says. “And it’s when your resources in town are stretched beyond what you can typically handle. And so you have a lot of patients, a lot of injuries. And so when you have a mass casualty incident, you have a triage officer, and the first thing they do is they start triage.”

As medical professionals were triaging and treating patients in the mountains, Dahl Memorial Clinic was getting ready for their part down in the valley. Albert Wall, the clinic’s executive director, contacted Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau as part of protocol. They informed him that some of their medical staff was in town to run the Klondike Relay.

“Before the first ambulance showed up, we had a van full of emergency room docs,” Wall says. “Mid-level practitioners and nurses that showed up volunteering as good Samaritans to help. It was tremendous. One of those doctors was already associated with the clinic and was credentialed here, and so they were able to come in and plug in pretty seamlessly with the three providers we already had on the ground.”

While Wall couldn’t give specific information on injuries due to privacy issues, he explained what to generally expect in a serious vehicle accident. 

“There’s broken glass,” he says. “There’s people hitting their heads. You know, there’s a potential for broken bones, and spinal column injuries, and head injuries and all kinds of stuff. There’s a lot of what I would call non-emergent, like lacerations and such. But behind that, you don’t ever really know how hard the person hit and if they’re bleeding internally, or if they’ve broken something, or have a blood clot or whatever. So whenever someone comes in that’s been in a traumatic accident like that, of course, you have to do everything you can to rule out any serious injuries while you’re treating what is evident.”

Wall says two of the eight Skagway patients were eventually medevaced by vehicle to Whitehorse. Air transport was unavailable due to weather and other factors.

Stacy Gould has owned Chilkoot Charters and Tours for 12 years. Her parents ran the company beginning in 1994. According to Gould, the driver of the bus that crashed had a medical emergency. She describes him as “extremely respected and loved in Skagway.” He’s been doing local tours since 2002.

Gould says one of her drivers responded to the scene, and two of their buses were sent up when they heard the news.

She says the company is still working through the shock and her main focus is to make sure everyone is okay.

Due to the accident, the start of the Klondike Road Relay was delayed by four hours and the first three legs were canceled. The relay is an international, overnight race from Skagway to Whitehorse. For this year only, participants who were unable to compete in their assigned section were allowed to run or walk along with a teammate.