MEDICAL personnel from St James's Hospital, Dublin, treated a tanker driver at the scene as he was cut from his vehicle after a major traffic accident on the M4 near Celbridge, Co Kildare, yesterday evening.
The driver, who was in his 40s, was last night described by a hospital spokeswoman as seriously ill but stable, after the accident which caused severe traffic disruption during rush hour.
The vehicle, a bulk cement tanker, hit the embankment on the M4 between Celbridge and Maynooth, and overturned back out onto the motorway. It collided with a Jeep as it blocked half the roadway. Nobody in the Jeep was injured, but it took fire officers three hours to cut the driver from his vehicle. A specialist team of consultant anaesthetist and two nurses from St James's Hospital, treated the driver while he was being freed.
During the operation traffic was cut to one lane. However, two cranes had to be brought down from the city centre to remove the tanker from the motorway.
This took about an hour during which gardai from Celbridge and the traffic division closed the motorway in the Galway direction and diverted all vehicles through Celbridge.