A crane truck driver in Nanaimo flipped his vehicle on its side after the truck’s crane arm became entangled in communication lines yesterday.
The mishap happened in the 4600 block of Hammond Bay Road in north Nanaimo shortly before 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 22.
Stu Kenning, Nanaimo Fire Rescue assistant chief of operations, said he didn’t know why the truck tangled with the wires, but the crane arm was up due to a malfunction or by mistake.
“It caught a bunch of different lines. It wasn’t just one. It hit a few and got tangled and then fell over, from the weight of the lines I guess,” Kenning said.
Because of the entanglement, the truck couldn’t be simply rolled back onto its wheels without causing further damage to the wires and the vehicle.
Kenning said a large industrial crane was brought to the scene to right the truck, while repair crews from B.C. Hydro, Telus and Shaw untangled the truck’s crane arm.
“The power had to be shut off to, basically, quite a large chunk of [north Nanaimo] to tilt it back up, just for safety reasons,” Kenning said. “It was tilted up once everyone was on scene and it went pretty smooth from there.”
It did, however, take several hours to get the necessary equipment and personnel in place to complete the job, during which time the section of Hammond Bay Road was closed and traffic re-routed around the incident site. Hydro lines were not among the wires contacted by the vehicle, but B.C. Hydro crews remained on scene as a safety measure.
The entire operation took seven hours to complete.
“There was no damage to the environment and the truck looked pretty good when it was rolled back over,” Kenning said.
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