Emergency crews extract pinned driver from semi crash in Salmon Arm

SALMON ARM – A semi truck driver is being airlifted to hospital after being pinned in his vehicle in Salmon Arm this morning.

Salmon Arm RCMP Staff Sgt. Scott West says in a news release police were called to a single vehicle crash on Highway 1 west of Bernie Road at 2:56 a.m. today, Aug. 30.

West says a tractor trailer unit left the westbound lanes and went through the trees, coming to rest down a 15-foot embankment.

Several crews including RCMP, Salmon Arm Search and Rescue, and B.C. Ambulance attended the scene. The semi driver, from Mission, was pinned in the vehicle and had to be cut from the wreckage.

West says the extraction was complex due to the terrain and wreckage, along with overhanging trees and the fact that the truck had to be stabilized by a heavy wrecker so that it did not roll further, which would have endangered rescuers and the driver.

The male driver "has been or will be" airlifted to a larger centre as a precaution due to the length of the time he was pinned in the vehicle, West says.

No word on what may have caused the crash.

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