A driver failed to negotiate a corner Friday night on Chemainus Road and struck a telephone pole, knocking it to the ground and blocking traffic in both directions near Howe Road.
Power was also knocked out to some nearby residents and flickered for others around Chemainus.
The single-vehicle accident happened around 10:30 p.m. The driver was not seriously injured.
Taylor Puska had just finished work around 10 p.m. and went through the site not long before the accident to retrieve some items from her home. On the return trip back to her boyfriend Tyler Mcleod’s place in Chemainus with Puska driving and Mcleod in the passenger’s seat, they were the first on the accident scene.
“I saw the truck on the left side of the road,” said Puska.
She added the male driver got out of the vehicle and approached them.
“He said he felt his truck fishtail on him,” said Puska. “It had just happened. We were there five minutes before and there was nothing there.
“It was a really weird mood. He was up and standing and he didn’t have a mark on him. He seemed very in shock.”
That short trip back to Puska’s boyfriend’s place wound up lasting an hour, as they stayed at the scene. Puska put on her vehicle’s hazard lights immediately to alert other drivers.
Another woman who lives in the vicinity came out from her driveway a short time later to check on the situation.
In the meantime, the driver had called his father to tell him what happened and it wasn’t long before a whole slew of paramedics, fire trucks and police cars arrived at the scene.
“They got there very fast,” said Puska.
She estimated it was only slightly longer than 10 minutes.
“While I was still there, they blocked off the streets,” Puska added. “When we left, everything was still blocked off.”
Drivers were forced to detour from either side of the blockage where the pole came down.
In the morning, there was a further power outage for some residents while the pole was replaced.