A crash involving three vehicles sent three men to hospital and snarled traffic for hours on the Nanaimo Parkway Friday morning.
The collision happened at about 7:30 a.m. between Mostar and Aulds roads when a man, estimated between 25-35 years old, driving a northbound older Ford Ranger pickup, lost control of his vehicle.
The Ford crossed the centre median, rolled over and crashed into a southbound Chevrolet Silverado pickup, driven by a man in his 60s, and a Volkswagen Jetta driven by an 18-year-old male.
Karen Lindsay, Nanaimo Emergency services coordinator, said the Jaws of Life were needed to extricate one of the drivers from his vehicle.
All three men were seriously injured and taken to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.
The incident required a sizable portion of Nanaimo’s emergency response resources to deal with the scene.
“There was upward of 24 emergency responders at the scene,” said Const. Gary O’Brien, Nanaimo RCMP spokesman.
Those included personnel from four ambulances, five police cars, two fire trucks and one rescue truck.
Traffic was rerouted onto the Island Highway at the Aulds and Mostar road intersections.
The highway was closed for several hours as RCMP traffic analysts investigated the scene.
O’Brien said the cause of the accident has not been determined and is under investigation, but weather might have been a factor.
“It was a windy, wet, rainy day,” he said.
The accident occurred near the same location of an crash in November, when a northbound car occupied by two women also crossed the median and struck a southbound transport truck causing it to roll over.
No one was seriously injured in that incident.