Seven teams from the Burgas fire and rescue service pulled out and rescued the injured after two pile-ups on the Trakia motorway towards Burgas. Some crews worked for more than 30 hours, service director chief commissioner Nikolay Nikolaev told Bulgarian National Radio. The crashes happened on Tuesday, 10 November, when more than 80 vehicles collided in thick fog near the Zimnitsa junction by Yambol. Eleven people died and dozens were hurt.
Fire crews in Yambol called for help twice, at 07:15 and five minutes later, to free people from cars. Five teams left Burgas first: a fire engine with rescue gear from the Karnobat fire station, three special rescue vehicles for crashes, two cars and one more with crash tools. Crews then asked for more help, and a search, rescue and body recovery team joined them, along with a team with a crane to lift vehicles when needed. In all, 22 staff worked at the scene all day.
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Nikolaev called the situation very complex. The many crushed cars made it hard for equipment to reach the scene. Normally the guardrail is cut and crews go through to the other carriageway, but this time that was not possible because there had been a crash there too.
The Karnobat team left first, at about 21:00, after more than 30 hours at the scene. The next team left at about 01:00 on 11 November. The last crews left once the carriageway was fully clear and the motorway had reopened. "I did not believe the motorway could be cleared so fast. I had never seen so many tow trucks in one place," Nikolaev said. He said the three regional governors of Sliven, Yambol and Burgas worked well together, and the services coordinated very well. "There was no one who did not want to help," the director added.
Nikolaev called on drivers to be more careful and to take the road surface, weather, speed and distance from other cars into account, so that there are no more incidents on this scale.