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Authorities in Quebec confirmed Sunday that five people were killed in the overpass collapse north of Montreal that also injured six other people.
The deceased victims were in two badly mangled cars that were crushed in the accident. It took emergency crews nearly 15 hours to lift the massive slabs of concrete off the vehicles.

Quebec Provincial Police, or Surete du Quebec, said two of the victims were found in one car and the three people in the other have been identified as Jean-Pierre Hamel, 40, his partner Sylvie Beaudet, 44, and Hamel's brother, 44-year-old Gilles. All were from Laval.

Cranes and other heavy machinery were brought in to break up the 18 massive concrete slabs that fell on the cars.

"We had two vehicles that were extracted ... around 2:30 this morning, and it became quite obvious at that time that there would be no survivors of this most tragic event," explained Jayson Gauthier, a provincial police spokesman.

"We had taken at that time the decision to transport the vehicles with the victims inside the wreckage into a municipal garage area here in Laval ... to extract the bodies from these vehicles."

A viaduct collapsed around the noon hour Saturday sending huge chunks of debris, and vehicles, crashing down on Highway 19 in Laval. Six people that were in cars travelling on the overpass when it buckled were injured, including four who remain in Montreal's Sacre Coeur Hospital. Three of them reportedly have spinal cord injuries.

Robert Hotte managed to escape the terrifying accident with only minor injuries. He and his girlfriend were driving on the viaduct when the road in front of them began to crumble.

Hotte managed to crawl out of their car after it plunged onto the highway. He was released from hospital after X-rays. His partner Anne-Marie remains in hospital in stable condition but she had some internal bleeding.

Authorities say a 20-metre stretch of three lanes of the overpass gave way, crashing onto the highway that links Laval and Montreal. The viaduct was built in 1970, according to Transport Quebec spokeswoman Josee Seguin, and Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt said the structure passed inspection last year.

Highway 19 is a very busy thoroughfare - about 50,000 cars use it every day, according to Gauthier.

"It will be closed for quite a while. It's hard to say how long at this point, but the next efforts will be concentrated on getting all the structure out of the way," he said.

Authorities and engineers are still trying to determine how traffic can be diverted around this busy section of highway while the area is repaired.

There were reports that about an hour before Saturday's accident that Transport Quebec was warned that a chunk of concrete fell from the overpass and the agency issued an advisory.

A Transport Quebec inspector was sent to the site about 30 minutes before the collapse but the overpass wasn't shut down.

"It is a viaduct that had never, until now, shown any signs of weakness," Vaillancourt said. "It wasn't on the list of viaducts and bridges that needed to be repaired or replaced."

A similar accident happened in Laval six years ago. Gilbert Vinson, 50, was killed when a section of overpass that had been under construction gave way and eight 70-tonne beams fell on his car. Authorities later concluded a construction company failed to properly install the beams.

"We have had the collapse of an overpass six years ago here in Laval, but of course we are not talking about the same type of overpass. The one that collapsed six years ago was in construction. As far as we're concerned this one is an old structure," Gauthier said. "Now the engineers are going to look at it."

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