Potholes the size of a small bathtub on B.C.'s Coquihalla Highway concern drivers
CBC
A Kamloops, B.C., woman says she’s worried someone could die as a result of hitting one of the large potholes on the Coquihalla Highway between the Lower Mainland and B.C.’s southern interior.
And she's not alone with her worry. Others who drive Highway 5, including a longhaul trucker, are sounding the alarm on the sometimes bathtub-sized holes.
Kari-Anne Flatmark hit a pothole and blew her tire out on the Coquihalla about four kilometres from Hope, B.C., on Jan. 10. It happened just after she noticed another driver on the side of the road, changing a tire.
"When I’m talking pothole, it’s not like [a] small pothole,” Flatmark told CBC's Daybreak Kamloops.
“[It’s] this huge hole ... It was like we got shot … the biggest bang ever."
She had been driving 100 km/h when the impact happened. Her daughter screamed. Although they were not injured, Flatmark spent about $1,000 on new tires and repairs.
“We were lucky,” she said. “Somebody will die. Honest to God, I believe that somebody will hit that pothole [and] lose control.”
Two of the potholes are the size of a "small bathtub" says Dave Duncan, the manager of Yellowhead Road and Bridge.
The company is responsible for maintaining a 140-kilometre stretch of the Coquihalla, from northeast of Hope to Lac Le Jeune on the Thompson Plateau, north of Merritt, B.C.
Duncan says fixing winter potholes is a daily job on the highway and this winter his crews have fixed the same holes “50 or 60 times” due to freeze-thaw conditions that continually damage the asphalt.
“Even with the best efforts, a pothole can reform every single day,” he said.
Longhaul trucker Harman Sidhu hit a line of potholes on the Coquihalla earlier this month and also destroyed a tire.
“There was no warning, no reduced speed [sign], nothing,” he wrote in an email.
Quebec’s third-largest city is switching from weekly garbage and recycling collection to every two weeks in a cost-saving move it says is better for the environment. But the plan is getting mixed reaction from residents and opposition councillors.
If you’re driving through rural Manitoba next summer, you might not see a big increase in the number of golden flowering fields adjacent to the highways, according to some provincial canola producers.
Saskatchewan RCMP say a drone was instrumental when two people needed rescue from a forested area on a dark night in frigid temperatures.
Lori Cheverie has received her fair share of teasing for always having her nose in a book — but for the next few months, that habit will serve a greater purpose, one that goes beyond the love of reading.
Hundreds of Kashechewan First Nation evacuees have arrived in Niagara Falls, one of the Ontario cities taking in people from the Cree community as it endures a weeks-long water crisis due to a damaged treatment plant.
Windsor-based Dainty Foods to separate Canadian, American production as it launches new product line
A Windsor-based company that’s known for its rice products has just launched a new line of pasta side dishes.
According to polling by the Environics Institute, 70 per cent of Canadians are either very or somewhat satisfied with "the way democracy works in Canada."
A plan to partially demolish a 139-year-old church has set off an uproar in a Cabbagetown neighbourhood.
A 33-year-old man has died after being shot by police in Brantford, Ont., Friday morning, the province's police watchdog says.
A Whitehorse resident says gaps in the hospital system are affecting continuity of care – and he has 2,000 pages of documentation to prove it.
A Newfoundland and Labrador judge postponed a decision Friday about whether a man charged with three attempted murders is fit to stand trial, in a case where the accused's family says the health-care system failed him and his alleged victims.
A doctor in Nova Scotia's Pictou County has been handed a professional reprimand for the way he treated a 30-year-old woman who died after being admitted to the Aberdeen Regional Hospital in New Glasgow, N.S., in August 2023.
Some New Brunswick fishermen are breathing a sigh of relief in the wake of a trade deal announced Friday between Canada and China.