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July 15, 2020 - 5:30 PM
Residents in a Kamloops neighbourhood are getting fed up with transport trucks causing damage while driving through their streets.
Lisa Padley was in her Valleyview kitchen at 9:25 a.m. on Monday, July 13, when a truck snagged her phone and cable wires.
“We could hear the wires pull and snap and crack and we went to the kitchen window and we looked outside... We could see it going down the street and the wires behind it,” Padley says. “My husband was going to go after him in our truck but when we went outside we saw the wires laying across the driveway and across one of our vehicles, and we didn’t know which wires they were so he didn’t touch them, just for safety’s sake, because we had no idea if they were live or not at the time.”
The truck was towing half of a double-wide modular home and was following a pilot vehicle. The tall load snagged the wires that hung by her home near Robin Road and Curlew Road, damaging her home and car.
“Some of the siding is missing at the very corner of the building where the box with all the wires going into it was. The plywood underneath got ripped off as well because it was all screwed on… When the box got ripped off our house it hit one of our vehicles, so there’s a dent and paint missing” Padley says. “Our next door neighbour to the left, the Shaw (cable) wire was pulled from the poll as well but there was no damage to their home.”
The box containing the wiring was ripped from the top of Padley's exterior wall and tore off some siding.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Lisa Padley
Padley says another neighbour watched as the wires were ripped own and waved her arms at the truck and then called the fire department. Although her phone and cable lines were fixed shortly after the incident, she isn’t yet sure if insurance will cover the cost of the damage.
This isn’t the first incident to happen to Padley’s home. Around a year and a half ago, a transport truck snagged the wires, pulling the extra cable that was in a roll on the nearby pole. The wires were simply rerolled and made more taught.
“Two years ago we had a semi truck to do a U-turn on our street and we ended up with four-inch furrows on our grass, and we had just installed underground sprinklers, so the ground was soft. That was another fun one,” she says.
Padley's lawn was damaged after a semi-truck did a u-turn on her property.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Lisa Padley
Residents on the other side of the Trans-Canada Highway have been dealing with the same problem.
April Wilds lives on Thomspon Drive and says the problem began about ten years ago. She says wires have been pulled down five or six times on her street and at her house three times. She wonders if the rig drivers think their neighbourhood is a good place to pull of the highway because they don't have to turn around.
“None of the trucks have ever stopped to see what they’ve done after tearing down the lines," Wilds says. "I feel like they could feel it. If I can hear it from the other side of my house, I feel like they can hear it from their truck, but they just keep going."
Both the Wilds and Padleys have tried to reach out to the trucking companies responsible, but haven’t been able to get any responses or compensation. Both want to see signage installed to prevent truckers from travelling along their residential streets.
Purvez Irani, transportation manager with the City of Kamloops, says he’s aware of this issue and may consider installing some signs.
“My understanding is trucks, they kind of stop at Frontage Road and then they make a turning movement back onto the highway and go through some local roads,” Irani says. “We’ll find out what can be done to avoid them using this shortcut.”
Irani says his department will review the incidents and will consider installing signs to encourage alternate routes.
“We can look at signage there,” Irani says. “We did provide signage for trucks that were using Owl Road, so this is definitely something we can look at.”
Although oversized vehicles need to have a permit while travelling within such areas, Irani wasn’t able to provide details as to what company was responsible for the Monday damage to Padley’s property. She has opened an RCMP file and hopes that insurance will cover the damage if necessary.
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