The South Gippsland Highway was closed in both directions between Koo Wee Rup and Monomeith for a number of hours this morning due to a serious vehicle collision.
A man has been airlifted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a girl and a woman were transported by road to hospital following the massive collision at Koo Wee Rup this morning at around 9:50am.
One person was trapped inside a vehicle and was extricated by the CFA and handed over to paramedics.
A man in his 40s sustained lower body injuries and was airlifted to the RMH in a critical condition. A female child believed to have upper body injuries was transported by road ambulance to the Royal Children’s Hospital, and a woman has also been transported to RMH by road. One other person was not taken to hospital.
Ambulance Victoria dispatched significant resources to the scene, including Advanced Life Support (ALS), Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) paramedics, and an Air Ambulance helicopter.
Eight CFA units were also on scene alongside SES, Victoria Police and Ambulance Victoria.
The incident was deemed under control at 10:08am and declared safe at 12:34pm.
The accident comes after a massive disruption on the South Gippsland Highway, outbound at the Koo Wee Rup roundabout on Friday July 26, after a B Double stockfeed truck tipped over on the eastern side of the intersection.
Importantly, there were reports that the driver escaped without injury.
Traffic was banked up for hours while the scene was cleared, prompting another conversation online about the suitability of two-lane roundabouts for B Double trucks, the camber of their construction, the speed that trucks travel at on the route, and the increasing number of trucks on the already busy highway.
Here are some of the comments posted after a picture was posted on the Lang Lang Community Noticeboard with the following comment:
“There’s a truck having a nap at the Koo Wee Rup roundabout. Try not to wake him he’s having a good snooze.”
Another post was a little more sensitive:
“Driver ok and out of vehicle.”
Here are some of the comments about trucks on the highway and suitability of the roundabouts:
“They made these roundabouts with a stupid camber.”
“Some of the truck also go ridiculously fast through there.”
“That road takes a lot of cattle trucks. If the camber is bad then there’s a high price to be paid by man and beast.”
Meanwhile, discussion also rages about the number of gravel trucks on the Bass and South Gippsland highways, many of them carting sand for the Melbourne construction sector from the Grantville quarries.
