North Tivoli: Lanes of Warrego Highway closed after truck smashes into bridge
Commuters are facing heavy delays on a major highway after a truck carrying part of a wind turbine smashed into an overpass.
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A truck carrying a section of a wind turbine has crashed into a bridge west of Brisbane, causing extensive delays down a major highway.
Motorists are being warned to avoid using the Warrego Highway at North Tivoli after the vehicle and its cargo struck with an overhead bridge about 2.30am on Friday.
The turbine has become wedged underneath the overpass and drawn a huge emergency response.
Authorities will use heavy tow trucks to try to remove the turbine, with crews to potentially have to bring in cranes to shift it, Sunrise has reported.
All westbound lanes of the road and Mt Crosby overpass are closed and are expected to remain shut for some time.
Diversions are in place via the on and off ramps.
“Eastbound lanes of the Warrego Highway are not impacted”, a Queensland Police statement said.
“Lengthy delays expected.”
The driver was assessed by paramedics at the scene.
He was uninjured and did not require transport to hospital, Queensland Ambulance confirmed.
Banked-up traffic now stretches several kilometres back towards Dinmore.
Queensland Trucking Association CEO Gary Mahon said he was uncertain of the route approval process as the load was under police escort.
“It’s not necessarily an usual load, there’s been a lot of wind turbines heading that way for some time now,” he told ABC Radio.
“Hundreds of these loads have gone west. We don’t know what’s gone wrong here, but we need to get to the bottom of it over the next couple of days.
“There is quite a bit of work to be done to get that piece of equipment out from under that overpass.”
He confirmed structural engineers are on their way to the scene.
About 6500 truck trips travel down the Warrego Highway each day, a road Mr Mahon described as a “vital link”.
“The Mount Crosby overpass has been certainly the subject of some significant consideration over the last couple of years … when you look at the general condition of the Warrego, that’s a corridor that needs quite a bit of work done to it,” he said.
“It’s probably the busiest corridor in the state.”
Local resident Rick said “a lot of money” had been spent building diversions around the bridge and widening roundabouts.
“How it got to be, with police escorts and pilot drivers, how it got (sic) to hit the bridge in the first place is just incredible,” he said.
“The bridge is the main connection from north back into Ipswich.
“(For) 20 years we’ve been fighting to get that bridge upgraded.”
Many took to social media to share their disbelief at the early morning debacle.
“That’s a bit of an expensive oopsie,” one commenter joked.
Another cheekily remarked “but Google (maps) said go straight”.
“What an idiot and what a huge traffic mess that’s going to be if the bridge is deemed structurally unsafe,” another wrote.
Another said: “Obviously someone didn’t do their homework on the height.”
“Like that traffic isn’t already a nightmare!” someone else wrote.
Many wondered why the driver had not followed oversized plan routes via the westbound roundabouts at Dinmore and Tivoli that allow trucks and other large vehicles to go around the bridge.
Plans for an upgrade at the Mount Crosby Road interchange are in the works, with construction expected to start in mid-2025.
As one local commented: “That’s one way to get a new bridge”.
More to come
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Originally published as North Tivoli: Lanes of Warrego Highway closed after truck smashes into bridge
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