ROURKELA: The drivers of two road trailers were charred to death after their vehicles caught fire following a head-on collision on the coal corridor road near Aulabahal at Sargipali in Sundargarh’s Lefripada during the wee hours of Sunday.
The deceased were identified as Mantu Yadav (35) of Jharkhand and Chandan Yadav (37) of Bihar. Sargipali police outpost in-charge Uday Sahu said the mishap occurred at around 1 am when an empty truck and a coal-laden truck, travelling at high speed from opposite directions, collided head-on in Sargipali, located around 120 km from Rourkela. The coal-laden truck overturned on its side due to the impact of the collision.
Firefighting teams from nearby areas rushed to the spot and extinguished the flames, but by then, both trucks had been completely gutted. “There was massive leakage of fuel from the damaged tank of one of the vehicles. The fire initially broke out due to a short circuit inside the air-conditioned cabins of the trucks and soon turned into a massive inferno, engulfing both vehicles,” Sahu said.
He said a night police patrol team was the first to respond to the accident and alerted the fire services personnel, who rushed to the spot to douse the flames. “The drivers of both trucks were trapped inside their vehicles and charred to death. Their bodies were later retrieved from the gutted vehicles and preserved for autopsy,” Sahu said. The autopsy will be conducted after the arrival of their family members, he added.
In a similar incident on June 16 this year, two truck drivers, Chhabindra Behura (49) of Cuttack and Sakil Khan (25) of Jharkhand, were burnt alive after their trailers caught fire following a head-on collision on state highway-10 near Kainsara village under Bhasma police limits in Sundargarh district.