Police are investigating what caused a cement truck to flip onto its side on a busy Burnaby street last Saturday.
First responders were called to Rumble Street by Griffiths Avenue just after 10:20 a.m. on June 4 for reports of a flipped cement truck, according to Burnaby RCMP Cpl. Mike Kalanj.
The Coquitlam Concrete Ltd. mixer truck had flipped onto the driver’s side in the westbound lanes of Rumble.
The driver was briefly trapped inside but escaped the ordeal with “very minor injuries,” according to Kalanj.
Traffic on Rumble was blocked from Griffiths to Prenter Street until about 3:30 p.m. while emergency crews cleared the scene and a vacuum truck sucked the cement out of the mixer.
The cement truck appeared to be have been carrying a full load, according to assistant fire Chief Darcy Robinson.
The flipped truck alarmed Burnaby resident Sherrie Dueck, who passed the scene.
She said there had been “tons of trucks” in the neighbourhood and noted the place where the cement truck flipped wasn’t far from the street where a 13-year-old girl was killed by a dump truck last month.
“There’s so much construction in Burnaby right now,” Dueck said.
The cement truck was towed, and RCMP are investigating.
A 2017 survey of cement mixer rollover events by the U.S.-based National Ready Mixed Concrete Association found 90 per cent of the rollovers studied were single vehicle accidents, leading the association to conclude driver actions were a major cause of most rollovers.
Another factor that led them to that conclusion was that the majority of the rollovers happened on dry and level pavement.
The survey also found rollovers overwhelmingly occurred while the drum was loaded versus partially loaded or unloaded.
The survey pointed to the “human suffering” that can result from a mixer truck rollover.
“Even one rollover is one rollover too many,” stated the survey.
In December 1995, a Kask Bros. cement truck filled with more than 20 tonnes of wet cement tried to make a right-hand turn off Broadway, crossed over into oncoming traffic and flipped over onto a 1987 Honda Civic, killing the woman inside instantly. Another driver was pinned inside his vehicle for four hours. The driver of the cement truck walked away with minor injuries.
The NOW has reached out to Coquitlam Concrete but has not heard back.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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