A 28-year-old man from Zurrieq was critically injured yesterday after the Scammel refuse truck he was driving crashed into a wall, overturning onto the coast road in St Andrews.
Police were alerted to the incident at about 10 a.m. The garbage truck was being driven in the direction of the Maghtab landfill when it skimmed a low perimeter wall on the side of the road, just past the bend further on from the Forum Hotel. The truck overturned, capturing its driver underneath it, and providentially in the wheel axle area and not in the driver’s cabin.
Two other persons who were in the truck were slightly injured.
A bus driver was the first on the scene with a fire extinguisher to put out a small blaze and help the passengers.
Soldiers from 3rd Regiment’s Engineer Squadron, en route for explosives’ live fire practice at Pembroke Ranges were luckily driving by barely minutes after the accident, whilst the bus driver was attempting to extinguish a small engine fire in the garbage-truck.
Initially, some 15 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant John Stroud, were able to contain the situation by controlling traffic and rendering assistance to the casualty till Civil Protection Department personnel arrived on site with specialised extrication equipment.
Motorcycle policemen on the scene were joined by others from the mobile squad to help control traffic accumulating on this stretch of road. With a diesel fuel spillage all over this main road, and given the traffic in the area at the time, another 12 soldiers from Engineer Squadron joined the main party from Pembroke Ranges.
They rendered the area safe by spreading sand from army sandbags onto the road’s surface to dispel the diesel fuel’s slippery hazard to other traffic.
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