No one was sent to hospital after a rollover crash in Cloverdale Tuesday evening along Fraser Highway.
A black car was upside down in the intersection of Fraser Highway and 188th Street around 6 p.m.
Deputy Chief John Lehmann said the fire department received a call about the crash at 5:43 p.m.
Two fire trucks responded, one of them equipped with extrication equipment.
Amazingly, no one appears to have been injured in the collision.
“Upon arrival the first unit reported that all occupants were out of the vehicles. The BC Ambulance Service assessed the occupants at the scene but none were transported to hospital,” said Lehmann.
The intersection was cleared by 6:35 p.m., he added.
It turns out, Surrey RCMP didn’t attend the crash.
Surrey’s firefighters have been clearing minor crashes and filling out investigation reports for more than a decade.
Fire Chief Len Garis said the initiative has helped ease congestion immensely, especially since the city is criss-crossed by highways.
ICBC numbers show that Surrey saw 912 crashes between 2011-2015. Of those, 443 were property-damage only, likely contenders for a police-free approach.
“From an efficiency and effectiveness perspective, it’s really improved,” Garis told Black Press this summer. “All of our accidents that have any substance to them, that information just gets transferred to police.”
See also: VIDEO: North Vancouver wants car crashes cleared faster
He said fire crews also used the information to help make roads safer.
“Maybe there’s a certain intersection that needs more enforcement or a better turning radius,” Garis said, “or there just might be reasons why that’s occurring and [we’re] using that information for evidence-based addressing of some of those issues.”