Two large All Terrain cranes rolled onto their sides while travelling to a wind farm in Scotland earlier this week when the verge of the approach road collapsed due to waterlogged ground conditions and possibly poor construction.
The five axle cranes – a 160 and a 200 tonner from the King Lifting fleet – were reportedly travelling a few miles apart on the same road to the 12 43MW turbine Windy Rig Wind Farm in Dumfries & Galloway on Monday morning.
A statement from King Lifting said: “The incident occurred on Monday 22nd February at approximately 07:00hrs. We can confirm that no parties were injured, and King Lifting is currently in the process of carrying out investigations to establish the root cause of road collapse.”
A statement from the developer, Norway’s Statkraft group, added: “On Monday 22 February there was a road traffic incident close to the entrance of our Windy Rig site, with a crane vehicle leaving the road. Thankfully, no-one was injured, and emergency services were not required. There is no immediate threat to other road users or the environment in the area. Following the incident, we have suspended all turbine component deliveries to the site. A plan for the safe removal of the vehicle is being made. In the meantime, traffic can use the road as normal and we do not anticipate any disruption to local road users.”
The road was apparently ‘improved’ last summer to include passing places for heavy vehicles, but the quality of the work looks questionable when it comes to the heaviest vehicles. The two cranes were fully not stripped down to their lowest possible transport weights, but it seems clear from the photographs we have received that the verges are little more than a layer of tarmac on top of the earth. This, combined with the rain made the track treacherous. The following photographs show a little more detail.  https://vertikal.net/en/news/story/37224/double-rollover?fbclid=IwAR1Rn7AJ8s8YDidv7Ary_EmBqGp-VM45PIG5SRCppfeq0TSLKfJaEgJoaPc
Graham Lang, SAS Chairman said:  I hope this will be a valuable lesson.  Improvements to roads often have to be made to accommodate the heavy vehicles involved in wind farm construction but this has obviously been done “on the cheap” and it was very lucky no one was hurt.  When you consider how much profit this wind farm will generate once operational, it’s a disgrace that corners have been cut to this extent.

SAS Volunteer

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