VANCOUVER — The victim of a fatal crane accident on Wednesday at Vancouver’s Oakridge Park construction site has been identified as a mother of two from Mexico.
Yuridia Flores, 41, is described by friends and family as a hard-working mother who just wanted a better life for her children, Diego and Ingrid.
“She realized the opportunity here to give a better life to her children and she dedicated every day to do so,” her childhood friend, Adan Flores, told Postmedia.
“All this time, she worked in everything that gave her the chance to help her family: as a housekeeper, in cleaning, and as a labourer. She was the hardest-working mom we knew, but she didn’t deserve to have everything just end while working.”
Flores became a permanent resident of Canada in August 2023 and moved to Surrey with her teenage son, Diego, from their hometown of Acapulco.
On Wednesday, Flores was working as a general labourer at the construction site at Cambie Street and 41st Avenue when a large wooden form is believed to have fallen hundreds of feet, fatally striking her.
The cause of the accident remains under investigation, and the construction site — which employs more than 1,700 workers — remains under a stop-work order from WorkSafeBC. The provincial agency has launched an investigation into the incident, with assistance from Vancouver police and the B.C. Coroners Service.
While this was the third tower crane accident in B.C. this year, WorkSafeBC said preliminary evidence suggests there are “few, if any” similarities between the three incidents.
Flores’ 16-year-old son has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help bring his older sister, Ingrid, to Vancouver so that the siblings can return their mother’s remains to Acapulco.
“My family and I are very devastated,” Diego said online. As of Saturday evening, just over $60,000 had been donated.
Vancouver’s Pau Novoa, who has been friends with Flores since 2019, said she was known to go the extra mile to help others in the same boat as her.
“Yuri found a way to connect to everyone who met her, especially being kind to others who were set into the hard life that is being a migrant,” said Novoa.
Daniel Hernandez, Flores’ common-law husband, declined to speak to Postmedia Saturday. He told media Friday that on the morning of the accident he had left his job as a glazer at the site early, but returned when he heard that Flores was in trouble.
When he arrived back at the Oakridge development, Hernandez learned that Flores was dead.
“This, we can’t change this. We can’t come back from this,” he told CTV News.
In the wake of the accident, the B.C. union that represents crane operators is calling on the province to ensure employers are providing adequate training for those who work on and around cranes.
Josh Towsley, assistant business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers, said while crane operators’ provisional licences must be renewed each year for up to three years, the union has seen many cases where a lack of enforcement has led to people operating cranes on a provisional licence for much longer than that.
“The lack of enforcement on certification is really problematic and needs to be fixed,” said Towsley, who noted that there is currently no provincial certification required for crews that work around cranes.
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