A 61-year-old man caught in a massive washout just west of the Sheep Creek Bridge on Highway 20 last week is recovering from back surgery in Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
Denis Pelchat’s wife said her husband and his work truck were pulled into the debris of the mud slide but he managed to escape crawling through the mud and water to the bank, where he went up about 100 feet to the side of the highway.
“It’s a miracle that he’s alive, he must have had angels watching over him” Mrs. Pelchat told the Tribune Monday, adding her husband is remaining in the hospital for now and is doing physiotherapy.
Denis is a feller buncher operator, and has been for about 30 years.
At around 2 a.m. Monday, June 19 he left home in his 2007 GMC pickup to drive to work.
He was climbing the hill, after crossing the Sheep Creek Bridge, when about half a kilometre up there was suddenly no road beneath him, “just a big hole.”
Without enough time to stop and even slam on the brakes, Denis’s truck was caught in the slide, which in its wake ripped out a 150-metre section of the highway.
When he hit the bank on the other side, the truck started moving with the mud and water, and Denis knew if he stayed in the pickup he was not going to make it, Mrs. Pelchat said.
“He said he fought with the seat belt and it was really tight. He was squished between the steering wheel and the seat, which broke his back. He was really hurting, but he knew he had to get out of there.”
The truck had a full fuel tank in the back, which ripped out of the back and crumpled the roof opening up the cab, she added.
“The mud was pushing the door closed, but even though he’d broken his back, Denis pushed himself over the seat, fell in the mud and water and climbed the bank.”
When he got to the road, he could not stand up, but a logging truck driver, also on his way to work, stopped when he saw lights flashing in the mud below.
“My husband saw him and waved at him to call the ambulance,” Mrs. Pelchat said. “I would like to give a generous thank you to Mr. Hooker for that.”
At Cariboo Memorial Hospital later that morning, Denis joked about being so squished in the truck that he was going to have ‘GMC’ tattooed across his chest.
“He does have the mark from the seat belt though,” Mrs. Pelchat added.
The family is thankful to the BC Ambulance paramedics who attended the scene, the doctors at the emergency room and for the financial support given to them from Williams Lake Truckers Association.
The Pelchats moved to Williams Lake as newlyweds 39 years ago from the Province of Quebec, about an hour from North Bay, Ont.
“We came here for the logging because it was better paid,” Mrs. Pelchat said. “He’s been working out there for years and years. It was pretty scary.”
Logging truck drivers first upon the scene
Logging truck driver David Hooker said he was the second person to come upon the slide, following closely behind another logging truck driver Wayne William.
“I was coming down toward the Sheep Creek Bridge from the east and saw a red light down by the shore line,” Hooker told the Tribune. “I continued on, looked across the bridge, and saw another truck backing down from where the slide was. I came up on him and he jumped out of his truck waving his arms saying ‘whoa, the road is gone.’”
When Hooker asked what he meant, William told him there was a big hole there.
“He said ‘come on up and have a look,’ so we drove up and got out and had a look. I thought ‘holy mackerel, this is crazy,” Hooker said.
“Then we could hear someone yelling and we looked to our left and there was this old guy that had gone into the hole with his pickup who had crawled up the bank to the pavement.”
Denis told them he went half way down the hill and his truck stopped, managed to climb out of the pickup and start climbing.
“Some mud came along and took the pickup pretty much down to the bottom of the bank ” Hooker said. “That’s the light I saw, it was from the taillight of his pickup.”
Hooker said he tried to get Denis as comfortable as he could because his back was hurting.
“I put my coat around him to try and keep him warm, I’m sure he was going into shock. The police showed up about half an hour later and we tried to keep him comfortable until the ambulance showed up.”
One of the RCMP went to look at the slide more closely and noticed the bank was still sloughing away so he told Hooker and Williams they better back their rigs up in case more of the road decided to go, he added.
“William said he didn’t know how he managed to stop, but he did, because you came around a slight round corner and the hole was there,” Hooker said.
“Then I was standing there with the police and we were saying that we could not get around to the other side to put up some triangles, cones or something to warn people.”
No sooner did Hooker say he would hate to see someone coming down the hill on the other side of the slide and kill themselves driving into the hole, when they spied a camper coming from that direction.
“We started waving our arms, blasting sirens, and he stopped 10 to 20 feet before the hole,” Hooker said.
“And you know, Denis told us he passed someone driving on the bridge when he was crossing it, so that slide happened seconds before he got there. It was a pretty exciting evening.”