FILE PHOTO

(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

A garbage truck driver in Kamloops was left shaken after a man was nearly crushed in the back of the truck.

When the driver thought they saw a body on the video camera inside the truck. They quickly hit the emergency stop before the man was compacted inside.

The December 2023 incident was detailed in a City of Kamloops report, which iNFOnews.ca obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

The man escaped what could have been a deadly morning even after the truck compacted once with him inside.

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"We have to be extremely attentive," city streets and environmental services manager Glenn Farrow said. "That's a key part of the job."

The driver, whose name and gender were redacted, tipped a bin at Andre's Electronics around 7 a.m. and moved on to a nearby grocery store. The compacter cycled once and just before the driver picked up the seventh dumpster of the morning they looked up at the camera.

The driver saw garbage moving and a camo jacket. After shutting down the truck and having a supervisor call 911, they climbed on top f the truck and heard a man "gurgling" and talking "incoherently," according to the incident reports.

Firefighters arrived with a ladder and helped him emerge from the garbage truck. He initially refused any medical attention and refused to give his name, but accepted when paramedics got to the scene.

Farrow said it's rare that someone is dumped into a truck, but it's not unheard of.

For city trucks, it has happened one other time in the last decade, he said.

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Another man escaped a non-city garbage truck in Kamloops last January and he spoke with iNFOnews.ca about the incident shortly after it happened. While he was unharmed, a man in West Kelowna was freed from a truck in December 2022 with injuries to his hands and feet.

In April 2022, a 52-year-old man in Penticton was sleeping in a recycling dumpster when he got tipped into a truck and compacted. He died in hospital two days later.

The Andre's Electronics dumpster lid was heavy and city staff surmised the man couldn't lift it once he was inside, trapping him until it was tipped upside down.

Afterward, Farrow said customers across Kamloops were reminded to lock their bins to keep people from climbing inside. While it reinforced safety protocols for city staff, Farrow said it likely wouldn't have been an issue if it were locked.

The video camera inside the trucks do not record, so footage of the incident could not be obtained.

Farrow said the cameras can help to spot people inside the truck, but they are often used to monitor for things that shouldn't be dumped in garbage bins, pointing particularly to fire hazards like lithium ion batteries and propane tanks.

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