At 15:40 on the 11th of January 2024, emergency services responded to a road crash rescue incident on Frankford Road in Glengarry, about 35 minutes from Launceston, Tasmania. The incident unfolded around 500m away from the Glengarry Fire Station, which saw crews responded from the Glengarry Fire Brigade, West Tamar SES Rescue Unit, Police, and Ambulance.
Upon arrival, the scene resembled something from a disaster movie: a logging truck had overturned as it came down a hill, snapping a telegraph pole and bringing down live power lines, which kicked off a grass fire. To further complicate matters, the grass fire was inaccessible due to the powerlines extending across the road and rural fencing.
However, this was not the end of the complications; the logging truck lost its load of large timber logs as it rolled and continued on its side down the road. As these logs continued at high speed, they struck a house that had been converted from a church. The house sustained significant structural damage, with one of the logs completely passing through the building.
In addition to severely damaging the house, several more logs impacted the area and roadway, one of which also collided with an oncoming vehicle with two people onboard.
“It was a very complex and dynamic scene when we arrived. Our initial actions were to triage and check the injured people, along with conducting a search on the house to check for any occupants who may have been injured by the logs. The fire had to wait as we couldn’t access it safely due to the live power lines.
Glengarry Fire Chief
Using winches, SES rescue crews were able to move some of the logs to allow fire units to gain access to parts of the fire that were safe to extinguish. However, due to not being able to access the fire from their side of the incident, additional units were requested by Glengarry and sent from surrounding stations to attack the fire, which was now moving up the hill towards houses.
An additional rescue unit from the Launceston Fire Brigade was dispatched and commenced securing sections of the home in order to prevent additional damage and ensure rescue crews could move around it without concern.
After the arrival of the energy company, the fire was able to be fully extinguished and crews continued working on assisting with making the scene safe. The vehicle was recovered using heavy machinery, and the timber logs were picked up and removed from the scene and roadworks were completed to repair several large damaged sections of the roadway.
Astoundingly, there were no serious injuries!
