A mid-Island woman and a dog traveling in her passenger car were killed instantly Tuesday morning when they were struck head-on by a commercial dump truck that crossed the centre line on Highway 4A near Errington.
The driver of the truck, which was hauling a pup trailer and which was fully loaded with sand, was uninjured, said Cpl. Mike Elston of the RCMP’s Central Island Traffic Services.
The victim’s identity had not yet been released by the B.C. Coroner’s Service as The NEWS went to press.
The incident occurred about 10:20 a.m. Jan. 17 and closed a stretch of the highway between Coombs and Parksville for nearly 12 hours as RCMP investigators worked the scene and the wreckage was cleared. An unknown number of businesses and homes were also affected by a power outage when the truck, pushing the damaged car before it, left the road and crashed through a power pole.
First responders included Errington Volunteer Fire Department, B.C. Ambulance Service and members of both the Oceanside RCMP and Central Vancouver Island Traffic Services. The collision also brought crews from BC Hydro to repair the damaged power line and Emcon Highway Services for traffic control as investigators remained on scene well into the night.
The dump truck was traveling eastbound, toward Parksville, when it crossed into the westbound lane and struck a small Ford passenger car carrying the woman and the dog.
“We’re still trying to determine why the truck left its lane,” said Elston, who added Central Island Traffic Services has taken over the ongoing investigation. “We’ll be getting a report from a collision reconstructionist, and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Division will do an inspection of the truck.”
Elston said the truck and trailer were carrying roughly 40 tons of sand. An excavator was brought to the site to offload the sand and an oversized tow truck was needed to take away the truck for inspection. In addition, a backhoe was pressed into service to remove the car from the thick brush after firefighters extracted the victim.
Traffic was detoured around the incident site via Errington Road and Coombs Station Road to Grafton.
“There were multiple vehicles on the scene,” said Elston. “It would have been impossible to safely do what we were doing had traffic been allowed through.”