Fairly epic disaster video

Hmm. Cranes and bridges. I know who’ll like this one…

But it’s not a happy crane and bridge video. It’s a bit of a disaster…

Look, because of the title of this post and the title of the video, you know that things aren’t going to end well. But it’s the way things happen almost in slow motion and the lack of any sort of discernible panic that makes this so entertaining.

And we can be entertained, because happily (and perhaps incredibly), as this news article with its sub-headings like:

Veel schade (lots of damage),
Puinhopen (heaps of rubble)*, and
Enorme schade (enormous damage)

…also tells us:

Burgemeester: geen slachtoffers ongeval Alphen

Although running it through Google translate, it does appear that he was only talking about humans:

It is believed one man wounded by two cranes and a bridge part topple Monday afternoon and attacked a number of houses and shops in the Main Street. The man was removed from the rubble and had problems with his hip. Also, a dog did not survive the blow.

Oh dear. Damn those attacking cranes.

 

* Puinhopen is totally going to be the name of my next metal band.

Icy

It’s been a cold few days here, but we didn’t realise quite how icy some of the roads are until I read this article in the local paper.

image

That’s a gritting lorry, full (previously, anyway) of salt to put on the road to prevent the ice from making the road slippery.
It doesn’t always work.

We went for a walk in the frosty valley this morning. I’ll try to get the photos up soon.

Tomorrow: London.

Accident at OR Tambo leaves World Cup flights in jeopardy

Bad news incoming from our obviously disgruntled 6000 miles… correspondent in Jo’burg:

Damnit. Finally, it stops bloody raining and now it’s freezing cold. And not only am I still stuck in this godforsaken hole with its ugly mine dumps, extremely thin air and icy mornings, but now I have to file a report on an accident at the airport here which looks set to have huge implications for the World Cup. Is there no end to the bad news?

Anyway, to business. Apparently, a plane landing on the main runway at OR Tambo International hit a “foreign object” and crashed. There was one fatality and possibly some damage to the runway.
At first, it was thought that the object had been dropped from a plane leaving for Europe, but given the lack of bubblewrap involved, I think that’s unlikely.
Details are still sketchy, but I have managed to get a photo from the crash site and I’ll keep you informed.

Seriously, is there any chance of getting me back down to Cape Town anytime soon? This place sucks.

Never mind his whining. It’s understandable. But wow – this looks bad:

Let’s hope they can get this all sorted out quickly before the crowds start arriving for the tournament.

Meanwhile, does anyone want a new rug for a very long room?

Live from Koeberg Interchange

Just popped across the road to get a couple of shots of the truck that has shed its load of metalwork at the deviation just beyond the Koeberg Interchange.

Bigger here

The front truck is the one that tipped over (it’s righted now), the rear truck is trying to move the large pieces of  red metalwork from the road. The traffic cops are sitting there having a fag. I think we’re looking at hours rather than minutes to clear it.

Take it easy on the way out of town tonight. Don’t get stressed and use our LIVE traffic cameras page to see the latest.