Bystanders used their hands to dig out drivers whose vehicles were covered by a load of dirt from a flipped dump-truck trailer Wednesday afternoon, according to the Burnaby Fire Department.
Emergency crews were called to the area of Grandview Highway and Boundary Road, less than 50 metres inside the Burnaby border, just after 5:30 p.m., according to assistant fire Chief Mark Forsberg.
“A dump truck that was coming northbound on Boundary ended up trying to round the corner onto Grandview Highway – it was a tandem – and the trailer section tipped,” Forsberg told the NOW. “The full load of dirt ended up going onto oncoming vehicles.”
The trailer itself didn’t make contact with the westbound vehicles, but the weight of the lost load was enough to inflict “pretty good damage,” according to Forsberg, with a Mercedes crossover taking the brunt of the haul.
“When our crew arrived, our initial arriving crew, they said that there were pedestrians that were actually digging some of the vehicles out by hand," Forsberg said.
Four people were transported to hospital in stable condition, according to BC Emergency Health Services.
City works crews were called in to help clean up the mess, and traffic was impacted for hours, Forsberg said.
Neither the fire department nor Burnaby RCMP were able to say where the dump truck had been coming from and where it had been headed.
Police are investigating, and Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement (CVSE) has been notified, according to Burnaby RCMP.
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