PICTURES: Fuel tanker crash shuts down A38 for 24 hours

“Petrol evaporates very quickly, so any damage to watercourses is minimum, the navy base has spills quite often that's the way they cope with it! Hopefully not when the incinerator is up and working!”

“So a tanker breaks loose, rolls down a hill then flips over. Emergency services arrive, assess situation and deal with immediate threats, polution and fire. Specialist crews orderd from further afield, fighting against back logged traffic. Area made safe by emergency crews, time to call in specialist team to remove fuel into suitable vehicle, takes time to mobilise and arrive. Then takes a while to safely pump to another tanker. Meanwhile, experts are figuring out best way to move vehicle without more damage or danger, cranes orderd in, at there convinience they arrive, takes a few hours to lift and recover safely. Then rest of spillage is cleaned up, layer of tarmac stripped, temporarily opened to traffic before being re shut to lay new tarmac.

Imagine coordinating all this between fire, police, environment agency, HSE, recovery operators, crane operators, highways dept and god knows who else. 36 hours is a small price to pay for such a technical, hazardous incident.”

“lamjc
agree safety has to be paramount but come on 36 hours by the way they let cars drive by before it was re surfaced 2 crews were sent away , miss managment of assets, wrong tow truck ,”

“Would you prefer that safety was ignored so that the tanker was pumped out quicker? Petrol is very volatile and must be handled with care, the road will have needed to be resurfaced as the petrol dissolves the bitumen so unless you wanted people driving at speed suddenly driving on a gravel track it had to be done. I'm sure they wouldn't have started to resurface the road until the danger of igniting the petrol was completed to protect the emergency services and the road crew.
Marc How would you have sped this process up whilst maintaining safety?”

“we who live down here are used to this level of incompitance but an for anyone looking in will be laughing there socks of with how long it took to move one lorry on a road that is the only road into Cornwall from this direction. It beggers belief at the laural and hardy scenario that played out. Will the company be paying for the re surfacing , loss of buisness and the time of the emergancy services”

“I used to assist a recovery driver some years ago and we were called to a tanker that had broken down on Landrake hill it was fully laden .I remember the driver saying to the emergency services that it was too heavy to tow very far .We managed to get it to the top of Landrake hill on level ground .They had to fetch another tractive unit from Plymouth and we used tall jacks to support the weight of the tank whilst we pulled the broken one free.
This probably should have been done in this case.I remember we were soaked to the skin and freezing cold at 3am in the morning .”

“This stretch really needs dualing its an awful bit of road, but as you say castleon never going to happen. And Kev because of the land slip in Looe and the Sandplace road being shut getting to Liskeard from Looe is now a total pain, to get from Polperro to Plymouth this moring we had to go out to Dobwalls and then through Callington it took not far off 2 hours”

“..'A fuel tanker being towed by a rescue truck broke free from the vehicle'..

Hey rescue driver, use thicker string next time”

“I cannot be the only one who finds our road infrastructure totally neglected by the Department of Transport. Whilst major road improvement schemes are undertaken throughout the country, the South-West from Exeter eastwards remains outdated.

I well remember a proposed scheme to dual the A38 from Saltash to Trerulefoot. Given the present ecomomic climate, what chance of that happening now?”

“The diversions were non-existant from the Plymouth end, just a sign at Saltash saying "A38 closed ... Diversion" and that was the last sign I saw. When I got to Callington I still saw no signs so followed Liskeard signs. When I got to Liskeard there were signs everywhere saying "A38 closed". As I was trying to get to Looe that wasn't good, ended up heading towards Trago Mills and going into Looe the back way.
Basically, no diversion signs anywhere, I was lucky because I knew the area but any visitors to the county are probably still out there wondering where they are.
Good job it wasn't in the summer.”