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Wives of two men killed in concrete truck incident on Gabriola Island file civil suit against multiple companies

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The wives of the two men killed in last year’s Gabriola Island concrete truck incident are now filing a civil suit against the company who rented out the machine. 

At around 10:50 a.m. on the morning of March 16th 2021, RCMP were called to a construction site on Taylor Road where the boom of a concrete pump-truck had broken and landed on two construction workers.

Both men, Chris Straw and Marc Doré, were pronounced deceased at the scene.

Gabriola Island RCMP and WorkSafe BC conducted parallel investigations regarding the tragic incident and the deaths were not believed to be suspicious.

See more: Two people killed in concrete truck incident on Gabriola Island

Now, the wives of Straw and Doré have filed a civil suit against M & K Ready Mix Inc. d.b.a. Bedrock Redi-Mix Ltd., Tripac Engineering Ltd., Alliance Concrete Pumps Inc. and JunJin Heavy Industry Co., Ltd.

“When you hire a company to do a job, you expect its equipment to be job‐ready—that it has been inspected, meets requirements, and is safe for its intended use,” the suit reads.

“The WorkSafeBC Incident Investigation Report on this tragedy reinforces our families’ opinion that a preventable equipment failure killed Chris and Marc.”The suit describes details of the WorkSafeBC incident investigation report which revealed the concrete pumper truck involved was in an incident in November 2020 that resulted in substantial damage to the boom and its turning column. 

A weld repair was made and a positive inspection was issued without a proper inspection ever being conducted.

It was only a few months later, in March 2021, that the truck’s boom experienced a failure, in the same area of the boom as the previous weld repair, that killed Straw and Doré.

“With our hearts and dreams shattered, we are launching these claims to ensure that those responsible are held accountable for the senseless deaths of two precious family men and valued community members.”

In addition to pursuing legal actions, the families say they will apply pressure on the appropriate regulatory bodies to increase the enforcement of standards and regulations in the concrete pumping industry.

“Not one of the defendants named in these claims has expressed or demonstrated remorse to our families,” the suit continued.

“The company whose equipment failed with such terrible consequences has had neither the grace nor the humanity to extend even a single word of condolence for our immense and traumatic losses.”

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