Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Thou­sands of com­muters were stuck in grid­lock traf­fic yes­ter­day, af­ter a sev­en-ve­hi­cle col­li­sion along the east­bound lane of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way caused a mas­sive traf­fic pile-up.

The ac­ci­dent oc­curred short­ly af­ter 3 pm near the Val­park Shop­ping Plaza in Val­sayn.

The traf­fic sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to au­tho­rise the tem­po­rary open­ing of the east­bound lane of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route un­til 9 pm.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, as­sis­tant chief fire of­fi­cer of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Noel Stew­art, con­firmed that there were no fa­tal­i­ties.

He said the San Juan Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed to as­sist with clear­ing the road­way to re­store traf­fic flow.

Stew­art said when the Fire Ser­vice ar­rived, all the in­jured peo­ple had al­ready been tak­en by am­bu­lance to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, for treat­ment, and po­lice of­fi­cers were al­ready on-site man­ag­ing the scene.

Stew­art was un­able to say how many peo­ple were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of Traf­fic, Gavin Si­mon, al­so con­firmed there were no fa­tal­i­ties.

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a road ac­ci­dent and said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing.

Mean­while, Si­mon urged dri­vers to be care­ful on the na­tion’s roads, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. He said po­lice would con­tin­ue height­ened road traf­fic ex­er­cis­es, not­ing that for the year so far, they had is­sued 5,000 tick­ets, many of them for speed­ing and breach of traf­fic signs.