Icy road blamed for accident

By Cayla Gabruck

Pioneer Staff

October 23, 2009

An Edgewater man is clinging to life in a Calgary hospital after a horrific accident on Toby Creek Road.

Now questions are being raised as to why the road was not plowed or sanded after an early morning snowstorm on Wednesday, October 14th.

Barney Weismiller, 57, suffered severe injuries after he was hit by a vehicle that lost control coming down the slick road.  The injured man was chaining up the tires of his cement truck on Peter’s hill, just outside of Athalmer industrial park on the other side of Toby Creek.

“I talked to several other people who went down that hill that morning and they were afraid for their lives,” said Peter Howard, who witnessed the accident.

“You hate to blame anybody for this, but if they would have plowed the roads – if the road would have been sanded – we would have just drove up the hill like any other day.”

Wednesday started out like any other day for Mr. Weismiller, an employee of Coyote Concrete.

He was hauling a load of concrete up the hill when his heavy concrete truck spun out.  Unable to climb the hill, he pulled off to the right side of the road and called back to the yard for a set of chains.

Mr. Howard, who took the call, promptly jumped in his pick-up truck and started up the hill.

“If I could play that day all over again, I wouldn’t have even bothered to try to put the chains on,” Mr. Howard said.  “I would have went up to the top of the hill, stopped traffic and waited for a sand truck.”

Instead, he pulled over in front of the concrete truck and put on his hazard lights.  The two men then proceeded to put chains on the tires.  While they worked, Mr. Howard said, cars were slipping and sliding past them.

They were bending over a rear tire on the driver’s side, with their backs to the road, when a Ford Ranger came careening down the hill, out of control.

“I remember Barney just saying, ‘Watch out!’  Then, just a fraction of a second after he said it I jumped underneath the truck and he got hit square on,” Mr. Howard said.  “I felt the wind of the other truck go past, and it just smashed into the side of the truck.”

Mr. Weismiller was kneeling beside the wheel when he was struck.  Mr. Howard said that Mr. Weismiller ‘had no where to go’.

The force of the blow sent him 16 metres down the hill, where he came to rest on his side.  The Ford Ranger ended up in the ditch, even farther down the road.  Mr. Howard ran down the hill to help his friend, fearing the worst.

“I thought he was dead, because he just got smoked,” Mr. Howard kept talking to him in a reassuring voice until the ambulance arrived 15 minutes later.  The ambulance took Mr. Weismiller to the Invermere and District Hospital.  Due to his massive injuries he was then driven to Foothills Hospital in Calgary in an ambulance.  The Stars Air Ambulance helicopter was unable to respond due to poor weather.

At press time, Mr. Weismiller remained in a medically-induced coma, suffering from broken bones and massive internal injuries including brain damage.

Corporal Brent Ayers, the RCMP officer at the scene, said no charges will be laid against the woman driving the Ford Ranger due to the poor road conditions and the angle of the road.  He said the surface of the road angles from south to north, meaning the oncoming vehicle ended up on the wrong side of the road.

“In this situation, when the subject lost control of the vehicle, even at fairly slow speeds it became a skid, and you always want to slide to the left-hand side of the lane.”

He said the road was obviously in bad condition.  Several other vehicles also ended up in the ditch that morning on the same stretch of hill, he said.

“With three vehicles in the ditch, I would expect that the average person obviously had difficulty navigating the road.”

Jim Conley, general manager for Mainroad East Kootenay Contracting in Cranbrook, said that the road was sanded and salted 40 minutes prior to the accident.

He also said that the company’s response time was well within the provincial requirements.  Nevertheless, he said the incident is very upsetting because Mr. Weismiller works for Mainroad in the winter.

“Barney’s a long-time employee with us and we are very concerned with what has happened to him,” Mr. Conley said.  “It’s a terrible way to start a season.”

He also said the company was aware that snowfall was in the forecast on the day of the accident.

“We didn’t just look out the window and say: ‘Oh, it’s snowing, we’d better start up a truck,’” he said.

“We take this stuff very seriously, and by my understanding the road was sanded and salted roughly 40 minutes before that accident.”

Mainroad East Kootenay Contracting will hold a town hall meeting in Invermere this November.  Mr. Conley is encouraging residents to come out and voice their concerns.