A truck fire near Merritt. Seventeen tonnes of chemicals in a Maple Ridge mansion. The first Canadian document to name the Chinese syndicate supplying BC’s superlabs — and American streets.
VANCOUVER — In November 2023, a 26-foot rental truck caught fire on Highway 97C in British Columbia’s remote Nicola Valley, roughly midway between Merritt and West Kelowna. The truck was carrying a large cargo of hazardous chemicals — ethanol, formamide, lead acetate, mercuric acetate — which ignited, sending towers of black smoke over a stretch of open grassland and folded blue hills, on a road that runs northeast to Falkland.
