The embankment was extremely steep and about 3.5m deep. The trailer overturned, bending the chassis of the tractor unit. If you look at the images, you can see the N/S of the trailer is completely separated from front to rear. The bulkhead is severely damaged and it was only the trees jammed beneath the side that were preventing the whole load from coming out onto the ground.
It was our intention to recover the tractor/trailer and its load without it spilling or the trailer box collapsing. As has been mentioned before, soft sided fridges are particularly difficult to recover from situations like this due to their inherent weakness, the box being made of fiberglass that is simply glued together. It is only the shape that gives it rigidity.
Room was limited and we decided to place the NRC at the front of the combination. The 1075 was driven as far alongside the NRC as possible to allow the trailer to pass behind as the recovery progressed. A considerable amount of time was then spent creating the rigging arrangements which you can see in the images. 10 broad webbing slings were used at approx. 4ft intervals and additional slings were arranged to give both support and a considerable dissipation of the effort required to right the trailer. The rigging was set up in such a way that the cables passed back and forth between all straps and booms several times with the intention of keeping a balanced load on all components. The 1075 had to be positioned a long way from the casualty leading to problems with stability. The drag winch was used to run back to a substantial tree in the woodland where the cables were doubled up to assist with the winching effort required to pull the trailer back up the embankment. This did have the effect of aiding stability.
Kavanagh's heavy recovery vehicle was set up to create the main pulling effort required. It was rigged to yet another large oak tree where the cables were set up on a 2 to 1 arrangement. The trailer was righted and had to be supported at all times until on the carriageway. As the embankment was so steep, the side was virtually out of the trailer and the load was still bearing against it. Constant movement of both recovery cranes and cables was necessary to keep everything under control whilst the position of the trailer changed during the winching process.
Once the trailer was back onto the carriageway, ratchet straps were used to secure the side once the recovery equipment was removed. Both cranes were then used to lift the tractor unit/front of trailer out of the hole and place them on the carriageway. It was recovered to Kavanagh's base with their heavy recovery vehicle.
Here's a link to the news article: http://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/ ... ash-91428/
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