A company based on the central island of Vancouver has been rebuked after its rock and articulated driver fell on Lake Nitinaht, about 100 kilometers northwest of Victoria, an incident that was captured in an impressive viral video published on social networks.
In a Facebook publication, Roc-Star Enterprises, based in Port Alberni, says the incident occurred on August 26, 2025, during a fish habitat restoration project.
The dramatic video shows a large truck that transports a dozen records that operate near a coast. The vehicle leads parallel to the water and then falls to the lake as the ground yields.
“Fortunately, the experienced operator was also an experienced swimmer and could leave the vehicle and swim to a safe place without injuries. He handled the situation remarkably well,” the company wrote.
“This event underlines the critical importance of the continuous evaluation of risks in dynamic environments, particularly when working in water or near the water.”
As of September 16, the video has almost 300,000 visits on Facebook.
The publication says that the company decided to share the video to “raise awareness and support the safer practices industry.”
“The incident serves as a powerful reminder of the unpredictable nature of the work of the coast and the need for continuous surveillance, planning and training in security at all levels of the heavy industry,” says the post.
CBC News has communicated with the company several times to comment in recent weeks.
In an email sent on August 30, owner Bill Coates confirmed that the video is authentic and has not been altered by AI, like many people who commented on the publication seemed to believe.
Coates said the incident is under investigation and would be inappropriate for him to make more comments.
Worksafebc report
Several people have published comments about the video, questioning the company’s security standards.
Worksafebc confirmed that he was investigating the incident. The Security Organization in the legislated workplace shared a report, drafted for privacy, dated September 5, 2025.
The report says that Roc-Star Enterprises is a business that builds and mainly mainly maintains roads and bridges in resource roads.
“This employer had an articulated rock truck that operated on a beach that could not support the weight of the truck,” says the report. “The floor was liquefied and the truck became unstable and rolled to the lake.”
Worksafebc says that the incident contravened section 4.1 of the Occupational Security Regulation, which is that a workplace must be “planned, built, used and maintained to protect anyone who works in the workplace.”
He has ordered Roc-Star Enterprises to prepare a compliance notification report before September 25, 2025.
Challenging environment
Enda Murphy, an assistant professor in coastal engineering at British Columbia University, says that working in coastal environments can be really challenging.
Murphy is not familiar with the details of this particular project, but told CBC News that heavy machinery would normally be avoided in steep situations on the coast.
“The sediments that have moved relatively for things like waves and currents … are not so stable inherently. They are quite full and because they are on the coast, of course, there is a high content of humidity or saturation,” he said.
“Loading them largely as we saw in that video can lead to instability, and in that case, I suppose the complete failure of the slope.”
Murphy says that evaluating a marine work environment is an interdisciplinary problem. He added that no work environment is completely safe, and natural environments often have dangers that can affect security in the workplace.
It is not clear what precautions, if any, Roc Star companies had taken in this situation.
