Ice bombs falling on the Alex Fraser, Port Mann crushing windshields

DELTA (NEWS 1130) – We have multiple reports from our listeners of smashed windshields due to falling ice on the Alex Fraser Bridge.

The windshield on Michael Mueller’s car is completely caved in, and his rear view mirror is dangling having been dislodged from the glass during the impact around 1:30 p.m. on Monday.

“The damage [makes my car] virtually undrivable,” says Mueller. “It looks like a big rock hit it, but it was an ice chunk.”

He says it was frightening but he managed to keep his cool and cross the bridge without crashing.

“They should be manning these bridges a lot better to make sure when ice conditions happen that something like this doesn’t happen,” says Mueller. “It’s just me by myself, but if it was a family or whatever, it would be terrifying. Terrifying.”

Since Mueller contacted us, we’ve had other listeners send in pictures sharing similar stories.

The Ministry of Transportation promises to get us some more information on this shortly.

Jordan was driving on the Port Mann and says he was his car was hit by falling ice.

“All of a sudden I heard this giant bang and it scared the living daylights out fo me. It took me a couple seconds to realize what had had happened. I have this lovely massive spiderweb right in the middle of my windshield.”

He says the loud bang of his windshield breaking was scary, but thankfully he didn’t panic.

“I could definitely see how some people would just fear and go crazy when that happened. For sure, it was definitely scary.”

Jordan adds he’s hoping to find a shop to repair his window tomorrow, but with the way the weather has been that might not happen.

Mike called in from the Port Mann with a similar tale. “I saw all the ice on all the cables and everything… I slowed right down as slow as I could go without causing a traffic jam. And it didn’t matter. A big chunk of ice came flying down and smashed my windshield. There’s cracks all over it,” recalls Mike. “I let out a couple swear words, kept the wheel straight and carried on. There’s not much you can do about it.”

“I let out a couple swear words, kept the wheel straight and carried on. There’s not much you can do about it.”

He says he caught the whole thing on his dash cam.

Ministry responds

The transportation ministry isn’t entirely sure at this point what happened on the Alex Fraser Bridge, but promises to investigate.

Patrick Livolsi is the assistant deputy minister for infrastructure.

“We’ve had occasional reports of damage as well,” says Livolsi of previous years. “But with the cables being parallel, we’ve never had a problem where we had to shut down the bridge.”

The ministry asks you to get in touch if your car was damaged by falling ice on the bridge.