Winter started strong in Abitibi this year; about 30 centimeters of snow fell in the night from Thursday to Friday last week, making road conditions quite difficult on Friday morning.
The Remorquage Belzile team once again showed its great expertise during a spectacular pileup on 117, east of the city of Val d’Or. Jerome confirms it, it is the biggest accident scene he managed in his career; about twenty vehicles involved, including several trucks.
Remorquage Belzile has deployed many resources to manage this scene: 5 of their heavy-duty equipment in addition to a 10-wheel platform and a dozen employees on site.
Firefighters and an environmental team were also dispatched to the scene due to a major spill of diesel and gasoline. Two tankers were involved in the accident and one of them lost 16,000 liters of gasoline.
Coordination between the different intervention teams was therefore essential to release quickly the service road and ensure the safety of the drivers involved. The most important thing for Jerome was to keep his calm despite the obvious pressure.
One of the greatest difficulties with this scene was the lack of space to work:
“There were 2 impacts, so 2 accident scenes. Between the two scenes were several tens of vehicules in the shoulder of the highway. There was only the middle lane to work. “
It is indeed because of the lack of working space that Jerome made the decision to recover the first 3 trucks with the boom over the cab. That way, he was able to make space to recover the other vehicules. So, everything went well?
“Yes! First time I tried a recovery with the boom over the cab. No problem, the truck did not flinch. We had firefighters pretty impressed watching us!”
After more than 12 hours of hard work, Remorquage Belzile team packed everything up, with the pride of a job well done. We also wanted to note that there were no major injuries during this accident.
In short, a job executed masterfully by a young team of professionals. Once again, congratulations to the whole team!
