HSE investigates tanker explosion
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• A tanker explosion in Sunderland last week is under investigation by the Newcastle Health and Safety Executive.
The Linkman Tankers 38tonner was on hire to Mobil Oil. On Wednesday 26 August it was carrying 33,000 litres of petrol from Sunderland to Gateshead when it was involved in an accident with a minibus.
The police are looking for a dark coloured panel van which may also have been involved in the incident.
The tanker overturned and caught fire but driver David Knight escaped with minor burns. The minibus driver and passenger were treated for minor cuts and whiplash injuries.
Forty two cars were damaged in the explosion and 200 people were evacuated from nearby homes because of the danger from petrol fumes. Linkman, which is mounting its own investigation, says that Knight had undergone "stringent and extensive" training in hazardous cargo transport.
"In the past two years Linkman's fleet has safely travelled over 50 million miles without any major incident," it adds, "carrying more than five million tonnes of products throughout the UK and Europe."
Newcastle health and safety inspector Stephen Bliss says that the HSE has yet to establish a cause for the accident: "We are looking primarily at driver training, markings and how the vehicle was loaded," he says.
"The vehicle was so badly firedamaged that it's going to take quite a detailed examination to establish what happened," adds Bliss, "but initial indications are that there was nothing wrong with the vehicle."