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Truck hauling poles to controversial Campbell River pole plant involved in accident with neighbour’s vehicle

Nearly took out someone at the scene and sideswiped a car
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Poles from a logging truck scraped the top of a vehicle owned by Duncan Bay Road resident Diane Matheson. The poles were being transported to a pole peeling plant that residents of the neighbourhood oppose.

An accident involving a logging truck en route to a pole peeler plant on Duncan Bay road has neighbours calling for the operation to be moved out of their neighbourhood.

A log hauler, owned by Buttle Lake Resources Ltd., was coming around the corner, near a home at 4851 Gordon Rd., around 4:15 p.m. last Thursday when it ran into trouble.

The logs, roughly 90 feet in length and hanging off the back end of the truck, nearly took out someone at the scene and sideswiped a car, according to a witness.

Corinne Matheson, who lives next door to the owner of the car that was struck, said she thought she was going to die.

“I was standing on the side of the road and those last two poles were coming straight for my head,” Matheson said. “If I had not ducked, it would have killed me. The truck would not stop until after it hit Diane Matheson’s [her mother’s] car. There was a pilot car behind this truck and he did not radio him to let him know he was going to hit the car.”

Matheson said her mom’s car was parked right outside her own driveway on the grass, well off the road.

Matheson said she, her mom, and her husband were all outside waiting for a truck to come by as haulers had been using the route all day, breaking branches in her mom’s yard.

The three were hoping to speak with the driver the next time he passed by.

“The previous truck load of logs ripped a lot of branches off Diane Matheson’s trees and they were piled up in her driveway,” Matheson said. “She had to get out of her car and remove all the branches to go to town. Then she found out another truck was coming, so we wanted to get pictures of it.”

Matheson said she was angry the truckers were using Gordon Road, a mostly residential street, instead of using the logging roads, the Island Highway, and then Duncan Bay Road to access the pole peeler plant.

“There are people riding horses up and down this road daily, children on bicycles and people walking their dogs,” Matheson said. “We wanted to talk to the truck driver and tell him to go around on the logging roads.

“This is all related to the whole pole peeling plant fiasco.

“Our neighbourhood is being destroyed by this pole peeling plant, which