A crane lorry overturns while electricity poles are being removed

One Friday around 10:15 a.m., a 40-ton crane truck, equipped with a sixty-meter telescopic arm, tipped onto its side outside 34 Cauvigny Boulevard after the sidewalk collapsed. Its driver, Philippe, was unharmed. He said he had never experienced such an accident in twenty-five years.

The machine was removing the electricity poles installed on the cliff behind the houses, after the ERDF buried the lines. A first pole had been removed around 9:30 a.m. in front of elected officials and ERDF officials. To move the crane to the second, it had to be left partly supported so that the load-spreading plates could be recovered. That's when the sidewalk gave way.

Unbalanced, the vehicle had leaned against the fence and the gate of a second home, threatening the gable of the house whose occupants were absent. Two cranes arrived in the early afternoon to lift it upright; technical difficulties and several tests required the call of a third.

A high-voltage line passing under the roadway was taken out of service, depriving many subscribers of electricity to secure the twenty agents mobilized. The operation was completed around 9 p.m. Traffic between Vierville and Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, on the boulevard, had been interrupted all day. The gate was damaged, but the accident could have had much more serious consequences. The cut was published in La Renaissance – Le Bessin of March 13, 2012.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/PhDoc16/Vierville9mars2012-B.jpg