Chennai: Less than four months after a freak accident in the Tirusulam hills wherein a person got killed after falling from a height of 200 feet with his truck, another truck driver had a narrow escape at the same area on Tuesday. Driver S. Prem Kumar, who also owns the truck, managed to jump out of the vehicle at the nick of the time. Within seconds, the truck plunged into a 100 feet deep stone quarry. Prem Kumar was reversing the vehicle when he lost control of the truck. The police suspect a brake failure to be the reason behind the incident.
Prem Kumar parked his truck overnight near a crusher unit. He was ferrying stones from one of the crusher units located on the hills on Tuesday around 7 am when the accident took place. Luckily, he jumped off the vehicle, thereby having a close shave, the police said.The Pallavaram police registered a case. Quarrying has been banned in these hills for more than a decade now and the main business there now is stone crushing units/crushers where trucks bring in stone loads and get them crushed as blue metals in these units.
There are about 250 crushing units in the area.On February 21 this year, K. Kalaivanan (25), cleaner of a tipper truck, was killed in a freak mishap, wherein the truck fell from a cliff into the gorge more than 200 feet below. Kalaivanan’s body was retrieved three days later while it took the rescue personnel nearly a week to fish out the truck in parts.
