Man dies after crash with hydro pole on Vancouver Island

COURTENAY -

One man is dead following an early morning crash south of Black Creek, B.C.

Crews from Oyster River Fire Rescue were called to the Island Highway at 2:45 a.m. Tuesday after a vehicle had gone off the road and crashed into a power pole, destroying both the vehicle and the pole.

Fire Chief Bruce Green says crews were told power lines were down in the area as a result of the crash and he was the first to arrive on the scene.

"When I arrived on the scene there was obviously a car that hit the power pole. After a quick scene assessment, I found it was safe for me to be there and determined fairly quickly that the driver of the car was deceased," Green says.

He says the highway was then shut down while they waited for RCMP and hydro crews to arrive. It remained closed for several hours while BC Hydro crews and RCMP investigated the scene.

Markings left behind by investigators appear to indicate the vehicle, a BMW, was northbound but then went into the oncoming lane and into a pole after coming around a curve.

Green says nine crew members attended the scene.

"When we get back to the hall we always have a debrief and we've also got some traumatic incident stress forms that we get the firefighters to fill out. (It's) so we can put it in their files so in the future we have tracking of all the traumatic incidents that they've been at. We track it for WorkSafe," he says.