A lorry fell from the rail-cum-road bridge on to the railway track below damaging railway high tension wires on Tuesday morning.
According to railway and police authorities, a lorry, coming from Kovvuru, hit a stationary sand-laden lorry on the Rajamahendravaram Banana Market end on Tuesday and hit the parapet wall of the bridge. It overturned after hitting the wall and fell on to the tracks damaging high tension wires up to 250 metres,s thus creating a huge sound.
Banana vendors on the Saraswathi Ghat side ran helter-skelter thinking that some train had derailed. Both the driver and cleaner were injured in the incident and they have been shifted to the Rajamahendravaram government hospital. The driver and cleaner were identified as Peethala Pandu and Thota Sateesh of Vijjeswaram in West Godavari.
High tension wires over the railway tracks snapped when the lorry fell on them. Immediately, the electric engineering section stopped electricity on first line between Visakahpatnam and Vijayawada for 15 minutes and restored the cables immediately. A crane was summoned and the lorry was removed from the tracks in one hour. Rail traffic was diverted to single line and all morning trains were delayed by half an hour to one hour.
Since March 2014, there have been nine accidents on the Rail-cum-Road Bridge, in which three lorries fell into river Godavari and two persons died and four more lorries hit the parapet wall of the bridge, according to district crime bureau records.
