Diesel spill caused road chaos

DIESEL that leaked from a bus forced the closure of the M18 northbound on Friday afternoon, which resulted in hours of delays for motorists.

 

It’s understood the bus had the capacity to carry over 200 litres of diesel. Incidents were caused by the spillage and gardaí became aware of it shortly after 2pm. They closed the road and diverted traffic towards Sixmilebridge. However large vehicles such as trucks and buses could not use the diversion, as they were too high for bridges along the route.

Clare County Council staff spent more than nine hours dealing with the spillage before one lane reopened. Engineer Tom Tiernan said normal methods weren’t as effective as would have been expected. “The normal approach to these things is to apply something called RoadBio. That generally does the job but on this occasion it didn’t. We doubled the concentration and that didn’t work either.

“By 6pm we were in a situation where what normally does the job or a concentration by two of it, didn’t do it and we were looking at plan C at that stage.

“We came up with a combination of two approaches which ultimately did the trick and it was a combination of an application under high pressure of the quick expanding foam that the fire service use, applied under high pressure and the residue cleared off by suction sweeper. We followed through with an application of a dry dust that facilitated sucking up any further residue that might have been there of an oily nature.”

He said the final bill for the incident would run into thousands of euro and that they are hopeful of recouping the money. “We will be putting a bottom line on that and pursuing the owner of the vehicle responsible.”

The spillage affected a large section of the roadway. “It would have started between Ballymorris and Bunratty, the worst of it was around Bunratty but it continued right up to Hurler’s Cross.”

After getting one lane opened on Friday night, work resumed on the second lane and the hard shoulder the next morning with the road fully reopened during the day.

Councillor Paul Murphy said while he wanted to pay tribute to the staff involved in the clean-up operation, there had been communications failures on the day that exacerbated the problems being faced by motorists.

“The first thing I want to do is to commend the County Council’s outdoor staff who were involved and the fire personnel. I would also like to highlight the role of the gardaí in keeping motorists safe. However in these types of incidents communications are key and that’s where things fell down last Friday. There was nothing relayed to radio stations except for people caught in the tailbacks texting in. The NRA also have a lot to answer for as the signs approaching the Limerick Tunnel should have been used as a means of warning people.”