The City of Kamloops will be bringing in more flaggers to direct heavy trucks away from the Lansdowne Street construction zone.

Capital Projects Manager Matt Kachel says the move comes after a semi carrying wood chips spilled its load when it clipped an office building at the intersection of Seymour Street and 2nd Avenue Tuesday morning.

Kachel tells Radio NL the crash is frustrating as the City has been trying to reach out to truckers for the past few weeks to let them know about the six month long change in traffic patterns that will be in effect for the next six months.

“We tried to look at all the types of trucks that come through the city, and most of them that are in here all the time shouldn’t need those messages on the road,” Kachel said.

“They know not to go there through the planning with their companies, but the signage is really there for those out of town folks so that they don’t end up inadvertently driving themselves into an area they can’t get out of.”

While its not clear what happened Tuesday, it appears the driver of the semi continued down Lansdowne Street and attempted to detour onto Seymour Street at the time of the crash around 9 a.m., April 30.

“It just takes one little thing and then this happens right?” Kachel added, noting that semi should not have been in that part of Kamloops.

The flaggers, Kachel said, would likely be station at the intersection of Battle and Columbia streets, with the sole purpose of directing heavy trucks away from the construction zone.

“We want [trucks] to use the highway or go up Columbia and down Summit, not down Columbia because Columbia has a lot of intersections and its quite a steep grade, and trucks aren’t allowed to go down there anywhere,” Kachel said.

“Most people are following the signs and planning their routes accordingly but this just happened so we’re going to put a bit more flagging there to try to help prevent that from happening again so that we don’t have this issue.”

Kachel says he is glad that there were no injuries reported, and no damage to city infrastructure as a result of the crash.

“It would be an ICBC issue that would be dealt with through insurance because it was an on road accident outside of our work zone,” Kachel said, when asked if the city has any enforcement options available to it for this or any future crash that might happen. “I’m not sure what the recourse is but that is my understanding.”

“It is really damage to the truck and then of course whatever happened to the building awning that opened the back end of that truck up.”