Bus carrying Arctic Winter Games athletes ends up in ditch

A bus carrying athletes from Hay River, N.W.T., to Yellowknife went off the road on Highway 3 following the closing ceremonies of the Arctic Winter Games on Saturday evening.

Sarah Pruys, who was a passenger on the bus along with athletes from Greenland, said it happened around 11:15 p.m.

She estimated the bus was about a 25-minute drive outside of Yellowknife at the time.

Pruys was listening to a podcast when "suddenly I realized we weren't on the road anymore."

She said the roads seemed clear and she isn't sure what caused the incident.

"We were quite a few metres off the road for sure," she said. "They couldn't get the door open on the far side of the bus just because it was too deep of snow."

Passengers climbed out the bus window and hopped on a second bus that was travelling with them, said Pruys.

RCMP arrived on the scene just before midnight, she said, adding no one seemed to be seriously injured.

Pruys and the other passengers eventually made it safely to Yellowknife around 12:30 a.m.

"All in all, we were pretty lucky I think," she said.

Organizers had flagged potential risk

The second bus was deliberately kept emptytohandle an incident like this, explained the games'host society president Greg Roweon Monday.

Before the games started, organizers flagged the nearly 500-kilometre drive between Hay River and Yellowknifeas a potential issue, Rowe said.

With a winter storm on Saturday, drivers had to deal withextra snow and wind that is usually not there this time of year.

It appeared the driver got over too far to one side of the road and slid into the snowbank, he said.

"We had the extra bus travelling along with them, so there were no delays to the flight," Rowe said.

"Greenland, they're probably one of the furthest that comes from a charter, so it would have been a major problem had [the accident] created further delays."

"That was certainly one of our major concerns and we were prepared for it," Rowe said.