The city admits it was caught off guard by Monday morning's winter weather.
"The black ice took us by surprise a little bit," said Marie-Eve Boivin, responsible for roads at the Ville Marie borough. She was speaking to journalists at an afternoon press-conference called by the city near where the now internet-famous pileup took place.
As black ice formed rapidly just before 8AM, she said the priority was sanding roads with heavy slopes, but that crews couldn't be everywhere at once.
Boivin said crews sanded Beaver Hall on the side drivers head uphill on but before sanding the downhill side they left for another emergency. She said that was the driver`s decision, but also cited a problem with the city communications system and heavy traffic in the area as reasons the work wasn`t done faster. The city said the other side was sanded around 9:30AM
Boivin called the situation extraordinary and said she believes the city had enough sanding trucks on the road, and mobilized quickly. She didn't rule out similar incidents in the future.
"It could happen again," she said.
When asked for her reaction to video of the incident going viral and being viewed by millions, Boivin said her priority was the safety of citizens, not how many views the video got.
Boivin said nobody was seriously hurt and that the city will be doing a full post mortem of the incident.
The video, posted by a Facebook user named Willem Shepherd, has been shared millions of times since it was first put on line.
It shows an STM bus going down De la Gauchetiere St., approaching the intersection of Beaver Hall. It was seen sliding, apparently unable to stop, until it crashes into no less than five cars near the intersection.
Later, a pickup truck crashes into the STM bus. Then, a second STM bus crashes into the pickup truck and bus number one.
And later, a police car is seeing spinning before it crashes into everything else.