(Photo: RACQ CareFlight)
September 22, 2015
The D’Aguilar Highway was blocked for more than six hours after a B-Double carrying cattle overturned near Nanango on Tuesday evening.
The incident occurred about 5:35pm on a bend of the highway between Parsons Road and Bushnells Road (ie. just after the Barker Creek Flats but before the Copper Country Motel).
The driver, a 57-year-old Oakdale man, suffered multiple injuries and had to be cut free from the cabin of his truck.
Emergency services including the QAS, firefighters and an RACQ CareFlight crew worked to free the man from the wreckage.
He was airlifted by the CareFlight rescue helicopter, which landed on the highway, to Nambour General Hospital in a serious but stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.
A police spokesman said the truck, which was heading towards Nanango, slid across the highway onto the wrong side of the road, through a fence and into a paddock before hitting a power pole.
SES volunteers from Kingaroy and Nanango directed traffic around the scene.
Cattle that were on board the double-deck trailers were off-loaded into a nearby paddock.
Injured cattle were euthanased at the scene by animal welfare staff from the South Burnett Regional Council.
The crash brought down high-voltage power lines, blacking out almost 600 Ergon Energy customers in the Brooklands, Kunioon, Maidenwell, Nanango, Tarong and Wengenville areas, and causing a small grass fire.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames and Ergon crews worked to fix the lines.
Power was progressively restored to most people between 8:00pm and 9:00pm and was reinstated to the final 61 customers about 12:50am after crews repaired the damage.
Police investigations into the cause of the crash are continuing.
(Photo: RACQ CareFlight)
(Photo: Gwenneth Flaherty)
