Manhole cover removed at West Kelowna bus exchange

Photo: Maline Cozzuol

Boucherie Mountain Exchange, West Kelowna

There has been another open manhole incident on a major thoroughfare, this time in West Kelowna.

Maline Cozzuol posted a photo on Facebook's West Kelowna rant and rave Wednesday showing an open manhole at the Boucherie Mountain bus exchange.

She said the cover was frozen to the ground, so she was unable to move it herself.

"The buses called this in mid day today (Wednesday) and the city still hasn’t come... called again and they said they’d try to get to it, (I) understand the city is super busy but this is super dangerous," she said.

Last week, Darcy Schindel's truck suffered serious damage after hitting an open manhole on Highway 33 at Loseth Road in the early morning hours of Nov. 2.

Cozzuol said she was disappointed with what she called the city's slow response to the call.

"If someone wasn’t paying attention or even slipped... they could have fallen in and hurt themselves tremendously or even gotten killed," she said.

The City of West Kelowna says, “once crews were notified, bylaw staff attended the site, installed safety cones and remained on site as crews reinstalled the access cover, commonly referred to as a ‘manhole’. Our process from initial call through to resolution took approximately one hour.

“The cause remains undetermined. However, in response to Castanet’s specific question, staff confirms that a snow plow was not the cause.”