'Total chaos' on our roads

MORE than 1,000 vehicles were this week involved in one of the biggest snarl-ups seen on Bexhill's roads.

A two-car collision on the Pevensey Marsh Road sparked a bizarre sequence of events in the evening rush-hour.

It involved a three-mile tailback, lorries and buses attempting to negotiate a narrow coastal route to Eastbourne and a burning van loaded with explosives.

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One member of the emergency services called it "Total chaos - a nightmare."

It all started at 5.25 pm on Monday when the two-car smash near the Lamb Inn closed Pevensey Marsh Road for four hours.

The cars were travelling in opposite directions.

Firefighters from Pevensey cut three people from the wreckage. All suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries and were taken to hospital. Police have not released names and addresses of those involved.

At one point bumper-to bumper traffic trailed back as far as the Down on Little Common Road.

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The aim had been to divert heavy traffic via Ninfield and Boreham Street and down through Wartling to Wallsend roundabout at Pevensey.

But before police could summon enough manpower to supervise the diversions, heavy traffic - including a double-decker bus - turned down Cooden Sea Road from Little Common roundabout and began using the narrow Herbrand Walk / Normans Bay Road.

The road quickly jammed from end to end, with the worst bottlenecks occurring on the bridge by the Star Inn, approached by a blind bend in either direction.

Just as traffic was totally snarled and tempers were getting short, a further complication made a bad situation immeasurably worse.

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A Rail Track Ford Transit van overheated and burst into flames just west of the Star Inn. The Transit was loaded with explosive detonators, used to give track workers audible warning of approaching trains.

Because of the risk of explosion a 200-metre cordon had to be established.

In darkness, drivers had to be persuaded to turn their vehicles round and struggle back the way they had come as the area was evacuated and the Normans Bay road closed.

Two teams of firefighters struggled for 18 minutes despite the use of "twos and blues" to get from Bexhill fire station to the scene. Sub Officer Graham Fletcher said: "It was total chaos, a nightmare."

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By this time the vehicle was blazing and crewmen had to wear breathing apparatus in order to approach the potential bomb.

It took two hosereel jets to douse the flames and remove the risk of explosion.

The van fire came an hour and a half after the car crash drama.

The Bexhill-based Sussex Police Road Policing Unit started an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, in which a third vehicle was involved.

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