A truck drives full force into the end of a traffic jam at a construction site. How it came about and who the victims are – a lot of work for the investigators. Rescue workers worked for hours.
Burg/Magdeburg – After the serious rear-end collision with three dead people on Autobahn 2 in Saxony-Anhalt, investigations into the exact cause are underway. The victims could not initially be identified beyond doubt, as the police announced on Wednesday. According to previous knowledge, the driver of a truck had overlooked the end of a traffic jam in the direction of Hanover about one kilometer before a construction site near Burg-Zentrum on Tuesday.
The vehicle, which weighed several tons, drove almost unbraked into a car with a caravan at around 12.40 p.m., the police said. The vehicles caught fire and burned out. The rescue workers were only able to save the two occupants of the vehicle combination of car and trailer and the truck driver dead.
Due to the force of the impact, two other trucks were involved in the accident, about 30 kilometers from the state border with Brandenburg, according to the police. A 38-year-old truck driver was seriously injured. He came to a hospital. Flying debris damaged a car that was heading towards Berlin on the A2. A motorcycle squadron from the rescue control center looked after road users waiting in the traffic jam. They were also given food.
Complicated rescue
The rescue and salvage work proved to be complicated and costly. Since the car involved in the accident was a hybrid vehicle, the fire brigade’s extinguishing work was delayed. In addition, the vehicle had to be completely watered after the recovery by the towing company in order to prevent the built-in battery from flaring up again, explained a police spokeswoman. A hybrid car runs on a combination of electric power (battery/accumulator) and fuel.
The road surface was damaged by the fire that developed during the accident. The police said it would be checked whether this might need to be repaired. The autobahn was completely closed for hours in both directions, and was later opened to traffic in one lane in the direction of Hanover.
The A2 is an important east-west connection. Again and again there are serious accidents involving trucks. On Tuesday, just a few hours before the serious collision, a truck drove into a traffic jam near Marienborn on Saxony-Anhalt’s border with Lower Saxony and pushed three other trucks into each other. Three drivers were seriously injured, police said. dpa
