A memorial honouring two veteran paramedics who died when their ambulance veered off the road and plunged down a cliff into Kennedy Lake in 2010 will be unveiled Thursday.
The unveiling of the memorial will officially mark the completion of road improvements along Highway 4 leading to Tofino and Ucluelet.
People from B.C. Emergency Health Services and the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C. will gather at the Kennedy Lake Rest Area to dedicate a memorial marker.
Tofino paramedics Jo-Ann Fuller, 59, and Ivan Polivka, 65, were driving back to their base in Tofino from Port Alberni on Oct. 19, 2010 after dropping a patient at West Coast General Hospital when the crash occurred.
A coroner’s report four years later concluded Fuller likely fell asleep at the wheel while driving along the twisting road. Just before 5:30 a.m. the ambulance jumped a 37-centimetre concrete barrier and plunged down a 33-metre cliff into 10-metres of water.
When the pair failed to arrive back in Tofino by 7:30 a.m., a search began. A maintenance worker spotted the path of a vehicle and police found the ambulance submerged. An RCMP Island District dive team recovered the bodies inside the vehicle.
Fuller, found in the driver’s seat with her seatbelt on, drowned, while Polivka, sleeping unrestrained on a patient gurney in the back of the ambulance, died of blunt-force trauma to his chest and head.
The pair, said to be best friends, had been off duty only five hours when they were paged at 1:36 a.m. to transfer a patient. Fuller had 23 years’ service with the ambulance service while Polivka had 14.
After the crash, the province increased the height of the concrete barrier at the site of the crash and made other road improvements, while the ambulance service implemented new policies for rest times.
In 2018, a small roadside memorial to Fuller and Polivka was moved to the Tofino Ambulance Station in anticipation of road work along Highway 4.
In 2020, on the 10th anniversary of the crash, a new memorial boulder was unveiled at the Tofino Ambulance Station with plans to relocate it to a permanent location after road improvements were finished.
Leanne Heppell, executive vice-president and chief ambulance officer for BCEHS, and Brian Twaites, paramedic information officer, are scheduled to make remarks at the ceremony.
Those attending the event can enter the rest area from either the eastbound or westbound lanes.
