A male driver and female passenger are dead after a single-vehicle crash in Burnaby early Thursday morning.
Emergency crews were called just after 3:40 a.m. to 5451 Canada Way, where a black Subaru sedan had smashed into a power pole.
“It was precariously leaning,” assistant fire Chief Bryan Kirk said of the pole. “It wasn’t fallen to the ground, but the only thing holding it up was the wires attached to it. It posed a real electrical hazard for the crews there.”
The car appears to have been traveling westbound on Canada Way at a high rate of speed, Kirk said, before the driver lost control, crossed onto the south side of the road and slammed into the pole sideways.
B.C. Hydro shut down power to the area, but ambulance crews remained about a block away because of safety concerns, Kirk said.
“Somebody could actually have a generator operating in their home and that could back-feed through the hydro wires,” he said, “so you need to have it grounded on both sides of the pole to have it 100 per cent safe.”
Fire crews worked to extricate the two people, but they were unresponsive.
Because of damage to the power pole, Kirk said Canada Way could stay closed for much of the day, so drivers should avoid the area.
