The truck driver who was hauling a trailer full of pigs bound for a Lower Mainland slaughterhouse said Friday’s accident that killed scores of swine happened in seconds.
Allan Kielstra said he was hauling 238 pigs from Taber, Alta., to Langley when another semi passed him near a curve in the road, sparking the 1 a.m. accident near Keremeos. Kielstra said 70 pigs died because of the crash.
“A semi passed me and I didn’t even see him coming by me. But it’s a double solid line and he forced me onto the shoulder,” said Kielstra, who was hauling a specialized pig trailer.
“When I caught the shoulder, my trailer pin broke and the trailer started flipping and caused me to go into the ditch. And then the trailer flipped into the ditch.”
Kielstra said it happened in seconds.
“You don’t hardly remember,” he said. “All I remember is going all over the place and then being parked on the road. I drove about a quarter-mile up the road and realized my trailer was gone.”
Kielstra said when he returned to the trailer, he tried pulling out as many pigs as he could, and that a rancher helped move them to a pasture.
“There were only two or three of us there, so we worked as hard as we could,” he said, “and got them out as much as we could.”
“There were some that were laying here that were stressed. But the reason they were stressed was is because they got piled up there and were possibly out of oxygen for a while. So we did whatever we could to save as many as we could.
“They were very comfortable all day. When we got them out to the pasture, we brought hay for them, we brought feed for them and they were rooting around.”
According to Kielstra, of the 238 pigs, 60 died from suffocation while another 10 were put down.
“I worked from 1 o’clock in the morning until 7 o’clock last night,” said Kielstra. “I worked until 3 o’clock in the afternoon to get them out.”
The pigs were originally loaded in Alberta at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Kielstra said approximately 30 minutes after the accident, the RCMP were on the scene, and that two more recruits came out in the morning.
On Friday afternoon, the pigs were loaded onto another transport from Langley.
According to a brochure from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, only animals that are fit to handle the stress of transport may be loaded. For more on the CFIA and animal transport, click here, here and here.