Toronto, Ontario — A B.C. driver is counting himself as lucky to not be seriously injured after making it through an accidental concrete hailstorm along Highway 1 on Friday.
Steve Hrabchak says “Definitely there was a lot of potential for someone to get seriously hurt, there was baseball-sized chunks of concrete coming down,” he told Global News.
The dangerous downpour was caused by a driver in a commercial vehicle carrying a large concrete slab that collided with the Number 3 Road bridge.
What resulted was significant damage to the front end of Hrabchak’s vehicle, but miraculously no injuries to the man himself.
“We’re talking about a 15-foot high concrete slab, when it hit the bridge the straps securing it came off, and if it had fallen over that would have been certain death for whoever was around,” he said.
B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation confirmed that a truck with an over-height load struck the overpass.
The RCMP confirmed that the truck driver did have a permit for the load.
Mistakes happen and luckily the driver of the truck owned up to theirs.
“He was concerned,” Hrabchak said. “He was apologetic.”
The Ministry of Transportation confirmed there had been four similar incidents in the Fraser Valley in the last 12 months, where transport trucks carrying oversized loads have struck overhead bridges.
