PUNE: The vehicular movement on the Pune-Mumbai expressway came to a standstill on Saturday morning after a tanker carrying chemicals overturned on Amrutanjan Bridge at Bor Ghat section on the Mumbai corridor at around 5am.
Around half-an-hour later, another truck carrying goods turned turtle in the ghat section in the Pune corridor blocking the expressway totally.
While one lane of the Pune corridor was opened for traffic after removing the container truck, the process to clear the chemical from the road continued till 1pm.
Being weekend, though the office goers’ traffic was low, vehicles of the visitors to the hill stations at Lonavala and Khandala were stranded in long queues. Vehicles moved at a snail’s speed as only one lane was operational.
The police and the expressway authorities managed to restore the vehicular movement around 1pm on the Mumbai corridor after removing the chemical from the road surface.
There were long queues of vehicles on both the corridors.
Police sub-inspector Anil Shinde of the highway safety patrol (HSP) said, "The tanker was heading towards Mumbai from Pune. After crossing the Amrutanjan Point, the driver lost control over the wheel and it turned on its left side at 5am. Following which, the lid of the tanker got opened and the chemical started spilling from the tanker".
"It was a thick and slippery chemical and it quickly gave rise to white foam", Shinde said.
"At around 5.10am, a container truck, heading towards Mumbai from Pune, came to the spot and skidded. The truck driver lost control over the wheel due to the chemical on the road surface and it crashed into the road divider. The container truck then fell on its side on the Pune Corridor (towards Pune). And this hindered vehicular movement heading towards Mumbai," he said.
"However, we summoned a heavy-duty crane to the spot and removed the container truck from the expressway lanes. One lane was opened for vehicular movement towards Pune in an hour", he added.
"On the Mumbai corridor, at first, we decided to spray water using water tankers to remove the chemical from the road surface but it was very thick and it did not come off easily. We then summoned earth movers to the spot. The police and IRB staffers used the spades to remove the chemical from the road surface," he further said.
"About 100-meter road surface was covered with the chemical and it took time to remove the chemical," Shinde added.
The HPS officials said, "Over two lakh small vehicles (cars and SUVs) travel down to Lonavla and Khandala on weekends from Mumbai, and about 50,000 small vehicles from Pune visit the hill station on weekends. All these small vehicles were stuck in the long queues of the traffic jam on Saturday morning".
