A Prince George woman narrowly escaped injury when she swerved in her car at the last second to avoid colliding with a boom lift crane that hit the CN Rail bridge on Foothills Boulevard Saturday afternoon.
“I’m very lucky to be alive right now,” said Laura MacDonald.
She said she was northbound on Foothills when a truck carrying the crane struck the bridge. The impact caused the 120-foot boom lift to be detached from its base, sending it directly into her lane in front of her.
“If I didn’t swerve to the left it would have crushed my car," she said. "“It completely dismantled in the air. It caused the whole contraption to fall off the trailer. The arm slammed into the bridge, swung left, and that caused the base of the boom lift to slide off and that impact on the ground caused the tire to come off and the boom lift to disconnect at the base and land in front of me.”
MacDonald avoided the flying machinery but her car, a Volkswagen Jetta, did not come out of it unscathed.
“I quickly swerved to the right and I was successful in avoiding everything and the only thing my car got hit by was a huge splash of hydraulic oil, it just completely drenched my car,” she said.
“I was in shock about what happened. It felt like everything was coming at me in slow-mo, so I was swerving hard, swerving left, swerving right, it was the craziest incident I’ve had in a long time. It was a huge crash.”
MacDonald, an RCMP dispatcher who works at the downtown Prince George detachment, pulled over and waited for emergency crews to arrive. The truck driver immediately came over to find out if she was all right.
The incident, at about 4:45 p.m. Saturday, forced the closure of Foothills Boulevard while a crew worked to clear the boom lift, which was blocking three lanes of traffic on the roadway.
MacDonald estimates the truck hit the bridge at about 10 or 15 kilometres per hour.
The clearance on the underside of the rail bridge for the northbound lanes is 4.65 metres.
The 120-foot boom lift, owned by TW Industrial of Prince George, was destroyed.
City spokesperson Claire Thwaites confirmed the roadway bridge at Otway and Foothills for vehicle traffic was not involved in the collision. Thwaites said a CN Rail inspector responded to the scene to check the rail bridge for damage and the rail corridor was reopened.
CN spokesperson Ashley Michnowski confirmed the truck hit the bridge at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday and that the track was closed and reopened within a couple hours.
The Citizen has yet to determine which trucking contractor was moving the machinery from the TW Industrial yard on Otway Road and is also awaiting a response from the RCMP to determine if there were any charges filed against the truck driver.
