Hwy 1 bridge concerned residents long before fatal B.C. crash
CBC
Sukhman Kaur remembers her brother, 25-year-old Raminderjit Singh, as a gentle soul who wanted to create a life of his own.
Singh came to Canada as an international student in 2019 and started driving trucks to reach that goal, his sister said.
A few weeks ago, he began working for Abbotsford-based Mountain Peak Transport, which described him as a licensed and experienced driver with around two years under his belt.
But that dream was cut short on the morning of Aug. 24, when his semi-trailer truck crashed off a bridge on Highway 1 and plunged into a lake channel. The incident happened in the southern Interior community of Sicamous, B.C. — around the halfway point in his drive toward Calgary.
"He's very innocent, he's very kind, and he lost his life," Kaur said in an interview with CBC's Daybreak South. "I don't know why."
So far, the RCMP has said Singh was the truck's sole occupant and the incident involved no other vehicles.
Plans to replace the narrow and aging bridge have been in the works for years, with Sicamous RCMP Sgt. Murray McNeil previously calling it "a hazard."
Community members have also long pointed to the safety concerns related to the Bruhn Bridge, which is over 60 years old.
"When that [crash] happened, I just shook my head," said John Krupa.
Krupa told CBC News he owned a houseboat in the Sicamous Channel — where Singh's truck landed — before buying a house nearby.
"This bridge should have been fixed a long time ago," he said. "This is an economic throughway for the Canadian economy … It's embarrassing."
The safety and economic considerations are known to the provincial government. Information about the bridge's replacement project has outlined these issues and local officials have repeatedly voiced them to the province in an effort to expedite the bridge's replacement.
CBC News requested an interview with Minister Rob Fleming, but the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said he was unavailable. CBC News then sent a list of questions, but the ministry didn't respond by press time.
According to the province, construction for the bridge's replacement is expected to start this fall, after several delays.
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