N381 closed almost all day due to accident: cleaning and repair a ‘time-consuming job’

The N381 between Emmen and Beilen near Garminge was closed almost all day today due to an accident between a truck and a car. The province’s cleanup and recovery work took fourteen hours.

Road users have been unable to use the N381 since 9 a.m. this morning. The manure that the truck was transporting ended up on the road due to the collision. A ruptured oil tank also leaked hundreds of liters of diesel onto the asphalt, the roadside and into the adjacent ditch.

All in all, the province had its hands full with the accident, in which the motorist was injured and the truck driver escaped unscathed. “In the first hours, most of the time is spent on the police investigation and recovery,” says a spokesperson for the province. “The overturned truck had to be lifted with a crane and placed on a low loader. The recovery crews and police were not ready until around 1 p.m.”

Cleaners and repairers could then get to work on the damage on the provincial road. Due to the amount of manure and diesel that had ended up in the roadside, it had to be excavated and repaired. In addition, an environmental expert investigated the extent to which the ditch is polluted.

“Furthermore, the tank of the truck had to be emptied from the inside. That was also a time-consuming job,” the spokesperson explains the hours-long blockage. “This is an accident that involves a lot.”

The N381 finally reopened at 11 p.m. The province previously thought that road users could drive over it again at 8 p.m. So she had to adjust that prediction.