Daijiworld Media Network – Puttur (SP)

Puttur, Mar 2: After a tanker carrying LPG from Mangalore to Bangalore tripped at a steep bend at Bedrody, Bajattur village in the taluk in the early hours on Tuesday March 1, traffic on highway 48 was diverted. The driver of the tanker, Bhaskar (26) from Salem, was injured. He is being treated in a hospital here.

Reportedly, this was the 22nd gas tanker accident at this village, and in most of the cases, careless driving by the drivers in the steep curve, without paying heed to the warning signal displayed here, is blamed for the accidents. No deaths however, have occurred in these accidents so far, although they have caused injuries to several people, and inconvenienced thousands of highway users.

As gas started leaking from the fallen tanker, fire brigade personnel from Puttur, and traffic policemen and Uppinangady police station, rushed to the spot and attended to preliminary precautions besides diverting the traffic. The Hindustan Petroleum Corporation technicians arrived later, took steps to plug the gas leak, and transferred LPG to another tanker. Till the operations ended, two fire tenders continuously sprayed water on the tanker to ensure that blast does not occur.

Local assistant superintendent of police, Rohini Katoch, assistant commissioner, Dr Harish Kumar, rural police circle inspector, Manjaiah, traffic police sub-inspector, Nagesh Kadri, Uppinangady police sub-inspector, Govind T Dasari, fire officer, Lokesh, and others supervised the operations.

Rural circle inspector, B K Manjaiah, noted that tankers are barred from traversing the Ghat Road from 6 pm to 6 am, but that the driver in question had started from Uppinangady at around 4 am, in violation of this ban. He said that the driver will be booked for this offence.