M20 CLOSED Kent. Footbridge collapse (1 Viewer)

[Hollyberry]

Bridge over M20 has collapsed onto a lorry.
Motorway closed

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/malling/news/bridge-collapses-on-motorway-101496/

 

[Ivory55]

What on earth will the insurance bill for that be ?

 

[peterc10]

Seems a lorry with a couple of diggers on hit it and it fell on another lorry. Nobody badly hurt thank goodness although it will be horrendous for those on their way abroad.

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[Puddleduck]

Hope no one was seriously injured.

Could have been so much worse.

 

[Allan & Loren]

One of the guys on rvoc has posted that it will be shut for a few days whilst they clear it!! Can just imagine the miserable chaos this will create if this is true.

 

[Minxy]

I heard about this on the news and they said that the motorcyclist was injured as he saw the bridge in his way and put his bike onto it's side and slide under the bridge to avoid hitting it at full force ... thank goodness he thought to do this otherwise I suspect he wouldn't have survived the impact.

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[Puddleduck]

One of the guys on rvoc has posted that it will be shut for a few days whilst they clear it!! Can just imagine the miserable chaos this will create if this is true.

BBC news had a police spokesman on who said it would be shut until at least lunch time tomorrow.

 

[hilldweller]

. thank goodness he thought to do this otherwise I suspect he wouldn't have survived the impact.

Hmmmmmmmmm, not easy to do that these days with ABS brakes.

 

[peterc10]

Trouble is that other half above the coast bound side looks very precarious. That will have to be taken down as well before the road can re-open. And I suspect a lot of the heavy lifting gear in the country will be tied up this weekend on all the Railtrack possession works that are going on.

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[Khizzie]

Looks like the lorry that was the cause of this mayhem was driving on the hard shoulder,is this an area,where that's permitted ..if not ...deep dooo doo for him and his company..

 

[Ivory55]

The more you look at it the more unbelievable it is that nobody was killed.

 

[Minxy]

I seem to recall this bridge from travelling along that part of the road myself and it has quite a big drop on it from one side to the other (northern) to the other (southern) so I wonder if the driver of the flatbed with the digger on forgot about his high load and travelling in the nearside lane at the lowest point of the bridge and clipped it causing the problem ...

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[Ivory55]

If it was low it should of been marked as. All bridges are at least 16ft6" unless marked up as different .

 

[Khizzie]

I seem to recall this bridge from travelling along that part of the road myself and it has quite a big drop on it from one side to the other (northern) to the other (southern) so I wonder if the driver of the flatbed with the digger on forgot about his high load and travelling in the nearside lane at the lowest point of the bridge and clipped it causing the problem ...

Looks like he was in the wrong place Mel I.e. The hard shoulder,most bridges are lower than main carriage way..

 

[Minxy]

Looks like he was in the wrong place Mel I.e. The hard shoulder,most bridges are lower than main carriage way..

It may be that he pulled over onto that when he hit the bridge, can't say from the photos so it will be interesting to know exactly what happened.

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[Ivory55]

Surely hard shoulder is still part of the road as such should be a 16ft6" bridge hight. Not much point in having hard shoulder if it can not be used by the traffic on the motorway otherwise.

 

[Hollyberry]

Just seen on Channel 4 news first 2 people who stopped and ran to help were a critical care nurse and off duty police officer. Were able to help motorcyclist and any other injured before ambulances arrived. Maybe a factor in no loss of life?

 

[Minxy]

Okay, I've got some of the photos and it appears that it could be the box lorry that is the one that's hit the bridge, not the one with the crane ... if you look at the image below you can see that the bridge has fallen onto the flatbed before the digger - it looks therefore like the flatbed driver may have driven onto the hard shoulder to avoid hitting the lorry in front and that's why he's there.

Alternatively it could be that the arm of the digger hit the bridge and dislodged/broke it away in which case it would mean that the flatbed driver WAS already on the hard shoulder, and hit the bridge which then dropped onto the box lorry.

I'm sure there'll be some reports on the news/internet shortly so we'll know in due course.

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[Ivory55]

We need CSI to sort this out.

 

[Minxy]

There's a report on here which you can listen to which suggests that it was the flatbed driver's fault but he makes reference to 2 diggers where I can only see one in the images ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-37204050

 

[Ivory55]

Yellow one at the front and orange one at the back

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[Minxy]

Another photo, this time from the rear which shows the end of the box lorry which appears to have been a normal height so it therefore suggests it WAS the flatbed driver and the arm of the digger, you can also see a smaller dumper just in front of it which is where the reference to a second digger comes in I think.

 

[Ivory55]

If the arm of the digger hit the bridge I would of thought that the force it would of hit it at would of ripped the arm from the digger.

 

[Khizzie]

As I posted earlier its the flatbeds fault he was driving on the hard shoulder for some reason. But as was pointed out the bridge ahould have been at the same height as the main carriageway..maybe somehow the boom on digger lifted a bit causing it to collide with bridge. Perhaps the driver realised there was a problem and got off the main carriageway to get it sorted ..just thinking out loud.

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[Ivory55]

Just been to the CSI lab. In a picture it shows the bucket of the digger on the trailer floor in front of the dumper. Often they put the bucket of the digger in the dumper when traveling, if so that would of made the arm of the digger higher . All guess work.

 

[Langtoftlad]

Whoever, whatever - the bridge should surely have withstood a collision?
Let's hope they investigate the structural integrity & construction of the bridge as thoroughly as they do the truck driver.

 

[DBK]

I suspect it is a Brexit plot to stop folk travelling to and from Europe. Not so much building bridges with Europe as knocking them down.

Which I only post as no one was seriously hurt as I understand it.

When I lived in Kuwait there was a similar incident caused by a tipper truck. They were resurfacing the road and the truck, after tipping it's load shot off while the tipping bit was still pointing skywards. It took out an entire bridge over the motorway! The driver "absconded" as the papers called it and was not heard of again.

The point of this story is these bridges, because of the expansion joints, are not able to survive being sideswiped, they just pop out.

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[Khizzie]

Whoever, whatever - the bridge should surely have withstood a collision?
Let's hope they investigate the structural integrity & construction of the bridge as thoroughly as they do the truck driver.

Its pedestrian bridge so wont be a sturdy as a vehicular crossing

 

[DanielFord]

I've been following this all day, and I think a more accurate headline would be "Bellend with a digger knocks over a bridge" rather than "Bridge collapses"
I think you all might see why my journalistic career was cut short!

 

[2657]

There was a similar incident on the M62 in 1975 when a mobile crane hit a bridge, two people were killed, I think the section fell on to the cab of the crane.

The reason was found to be that the hydraulics on the crane had not been isolated causing vibrations from travel to gradually raise the crane leading to the eventual bridge strike.

Whether this happened in this case or whether the driver is a bell end or not will undoubtedly be ascertained in due course!

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