STOCKHOLM, Maine — Four people were killed in a head-on collision Monday morning on Route 161 north of Caribou, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine State Police.
A car and sport utility vehicle hit head-on just before 10:30 a.m. on Route 161 near Rainbow Cove in Township 16 Range 4 near Stockholm, about 15 miles north of Caribou, McCausland said.
One person survived the crash and was taken to Cary Medical Center in Caribou and subsequently transferred to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor with serious injuries not considered life-threatening, according to McCausland.
Maine State Police troopers were still at the crash scene Monday afternoon investigating the incident and attempting to notify relatives of the victims, McCausland said. He indicated more information likely would be available Monday evening.
No official cause for the accident has been released, but according to the National Weather Service in Caribou, the temperature was around 12 degrees at the time with snow showers and light winds.
Route 161 was closed and all traffic was being detoured around Lakeshore Road, according to the dispatcher and North Lakes Fire and Rescue.
While not common, Maine has had its share of multiple fatality car crashes over the years.
“It’s not unheard of,” McCausland said.
Over the past decade four accidents prior to Monday’s Madawaska Lake crash have claimed 4 or more lives, according to statistics provided by the Maine Department of Transportation’s accident records section.
In 2004 three adults and four children all riding in the same car were killed when the driver attempted to use the breakdown lane near the Carmel exit to pass another vehicle at speeds in excess of 90 mph, clipped another vehicle and rolled over into the median.
Icy roads were said to be the contributing factor in a two-vehicle accident that claimed the lives of six people in their teens and early 20s Christmas weekend 2006 on Route 122 in Poland.
In April that same year, four sisters died instantly when their car strayed into the path of a logging truck that ran over their car on Route 11 in Ashland.
Two brothers and a father and son were killed Christmas Day 2011 in a two-vehicle accident on snow-covered roads on Route 3 in Palermo.
Maine’s deadliest motor vehicle accident was in 2002 when a van carrying woods workers native to Guatemala slid off the St. John’s Bridge into the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
Fourteen of the van’s 15 occupants were killed in the accident.
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