Five fire engines, from Warrington, Lymm, Middlewich, Chester and Powey Lane; plus a rescue boat from Warrington and an aerial appliance from Lymm.
Details
Firefighters were called to reports of a heavy goods vehicle (HGV) that had left the carriageway of the M6 northbound between Junction 20 and 21, close to the Thelwall Viaduct.
On arrival, they found that a HGV had left the carriageway and overturned on an embankment, falling over 60 feet. Crews used technical rescue equipment to lower themselves and reach the casualty, who was handed over to the care of attending paramedics.
Crews have applied water to cool the HGV and are using bunding to contain a leak of approximately 1000 litres of bio-diesel from the fuel tanks of the vehicle.
While the carriageway was fully closed, lanes one and two have since been re-opened by Cheshire Police and the Highways Agency.
UPDATE AT 21:09
Crews are now bringing operational activities to a close and are starting to leave the scene, handing over the incident to partner agencies.
UPDATE at 15:00 on 1 October
Station Manager Andy Hallworth attended the incident and said: “This was a very unusual scenario for us. It was getting dark, and it was raining as crews arrived, so it wasn’t the easiest rescue to set up, but we knew we needed to get to the casualty as quickly as possible. A technical rescue system was set up to enable a trained member of the crew to abseil over the edge of bridge to get to the vehicle. Thankfully, the driver was able remove themselves from the vehicle cab, so they have been extremely lucky.”
