GOOD SAMARITANS CAME RUNNING LAST NIGHT AFTER ‘TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE’ DOUBLE FATAL CAR ACCIDENT IN GRAVENHURST CLAIMS MUSKOKA MEN
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — “Less than a minute” before a fatal two-car crash claimed two Muskoka men in front of Pine Lake Cottages last evening, Yulia Syniavska and her family of five had just pulled off Hwy. 169 into the driveway of their holiday cabin.
“It was just terrible, terrible.”
Police say the collision happened Tuesday August 5, just before 6:45 p.m. when several 911 calls were received about the accident just east of the Narrows Road in Gravenhurst.
The driver of one of the vehicles, a 50-year-old Gravenhurst man, was transported to hospital, however life-saving efforts were unsuccessful and he succumbed to his injuries.
The second vehicle had two occupants. The driver was taken to hospital, where he was further transported by air to a Toronto hospital with life-altering injuries.
However his passenger, a 61-year-old Muskoka Lakes Township man, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police had not released their names as of late Wednesday night. And said they do not divulge the identities of accident victims.
Police say due to the position of the vehicles on the road and nature of the injuries, police closed a short stretch of road between Gravenhurst and Bala at the Narrows Road west of Pine Lake and east of it up to a kilometre away.
Witnesses the crash aftermath say it involved a black Subaru with one driver and a white Cadillac with a driver and passenger.
Syniavska said her family was returning from Gravenhurst and “I couldn’t even stop my car and I heard the sound.
“I think we were maybe the first” at the accident.
“My husband ran around the fence and he saw it was two cars that crashed together. And made this gesture like ‘this is terrible.’
“I went and saw these two cars and they were just smashed,” said the mother of two on just her third day at the long-time compound of 16 cabins.
“Other people stopped and came running. People started to say: ‘Call 911’ and I was calling 911.
“I don’t know anything about how to help. All I could do was call 911.”
The emergency operator “asked ‘who is inside?’
“One was in an air bag. People came from other cars and asked for a knife to cut it open to see who was inside and how many people.
“I couldn’t even reply,” Syniavska said this afternoon.
She said she saw a man in a black Subaru with long hair, but “I couldn’t describe his condition. Because I didn’t know.
“He was conscious.”
In the other vehicle, a “white Cadillac, I came closer to see his condition. But I could see he wasn’t going to survive.”
She said he was pulled from the vehicle “then the ambulance came.
“It was just terrible, terrible.”
Yesterday was only “maybe the third day” that the Toronto family had returned a second year to the popular old-style roadside cottages cluster on Pine Lake, after they had been there in 2023.
“We just barely got off the road. I didn’t hear any braking sound.”
However tire skid marks could be seen at the west side of the crash site where orange police ID markings were still on the road.
Jane-Michele Clark, who lives just west of the accident at the Narrows Road intersection, said she heard the sirens, but wasn’t immediately aware of what happened as police were in her driving closing the road, which she said was closed at least until midnight. She said it had re-opened by the time she went into Gravenhurst at 7 a.m.
‘I said ‘can I be of any help?’
Sandra Trottier and her husband Paul Miller, of Barrie, had only arrived barely a half hour earlier for the first day of their summer getaway.
Miller had quickly turned around going back to Gravenhurst to get bait.
And Trottier was just setting up in one of the cabins closest to the road and talking to neighbours when “we heard a huge noise up there. I said: ‘Was that an accident?’
“It didn’t sound like a car accident.”
“Most people obviously heard it. You couldn’t miss it. A noise like that I’ve never heard before.”
Trottier said she ran up the driveway without her shoes “and saw all the carnage. Everyone called 911 and we waited for the paramedics.
“It was a sad tragedy, for sure,” she said this afternoon while sitting on the small sandy Pine Lake beach just metres from the crash scene.
By the time she got up the small hill a couple of people she described as possibly passing off-duty firefighters were already tending to one of the crash victims.
“I said ‘can I be of any help?’ — as I’m a health care worker (fulltime PSW).
“Within an hour of arriving I was right back at work. But I wasn’t asking a lot of questions. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.”
She and another lady: “We just volunteered our services. We took turns. To be honest, it happened so fast you just swing in to motion.
“The cars were so mangled. You couldn’t see anything. Someone offered to do CPR.
“The guy just said ‘Talk to him.’ And I did. I just started talking to one fellah, asking his name. And ‘Are you married?’ I just kept him calm, awake and told him help was on the way.”
Unfortunately he was one of the two victims.
Trottier said someone said “it’s 6:35 p.m. in case anyone needs to know.”
She doesn’t know which direction either vehicle was travelling.
“We really don’t know what happened.
“I don’t know how much help I did. I did my duty and as soon as the paramedics arrived I stepped back. I just want to give everybody some privacy and let the paramedics to their job.
“The firefighters and paramedics seemed to be handling it really well. The last thing they need is to trip over everybody.”
Trottier said she also helped an elderly cabin member who was traumatized. And the woman thanked her repeatedly for doing so. And now they’ve bonded by the beach.
Much the same as Syniavska bonded with Lyubov Zarharch, the cottages’ housekeeper and key holder who also, “Yes!” called 911 and ran to assist.
The two women discovered they are both from Ukraine and actually from the same city of Dnipro in the middle of the war-torn country near the east where Syniavska’s family is fighting to save her country.
“Yes!”
Syniavska added the Hwy. 169 “turnoff” to the Pine Lake cabins is difficult to navigate, “because you can’t really see” the single entrance to one of the last roadside cabin resorts in Muskoka dating back 60-70 years or more.
And the speed and traffic is “bad,” too, she said.
The OPP Traffic Incident Management Enforcement (TIME) team is assisting with the ongoing investigation. Police are asking anyone with information of any kind, including dash camera footage, to call Bracebridge OPP at 1-888-310-1122. You may also report anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.crimestopperssdm.com.
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