Two-hour battle saves driver from lorry wreck

It was a tense two-hour rescue operation as Fire and Rescue Services personnel struggled to extract a lorry driver from the wreckage of his vehicle after it collided with a parked trailer.

On an otherwise calm Sunday morning, the fire officers were alerted on the mishap just before dawn by residents of Irumbuliyur who witnessed the crash on the Tambaram-Chennai Bypass.

On Saturday night, a trailer carrying large rolls of steel sheets suffered a puncture. The driver decided to leave the vehicle there for the night as finding a puncture repair shop at that hour was near impossible.

Govindan (45), the driver of the lorry transporting soft drink bottles to Puducherry, did not realise that a large trailer was parked on the highway as he sped along.

It was just after 5 am and poor visibility and sleepiness were believed to have led to the accident. The driver’s cabin crumpled in the impact of the collision and trapped Govindan inside - his legs were pinned by twisted metal and the steering wheel.

Firemen, along with an Emergency Rescue Team from Guindy, tried to extract the driver without cutting into the vehicle but found it impossible.

They then used two high tensile cranes to cut and remove the roof of the driver’s cabin to rescue him.

After two hours of cutting, welding, slow lifting and stabilising Govindan’s blood loss, they brought him out of the wreckage.

He was taken to a nearby hospital and given a few units of blood before he was pronounced out of danger.

Traffic along the stretch was thrown out of gear for at least an hour as the rescuers worked to save the injured driver.