Gas leakage halts traffic on Nashik-Mumbai highway

Nashik, May 25 (UNI) Vehicular traffic on the busy Mumbai-Agra national highway today came to a near-halt after a tanker laden with gas overturned near Umbarmal village in Shahapur taluka of Thane district yesterday evening.

The tanker is still stranded and efforts are on to remove it with the help of a 40-ton crane. Fire brigade personnel, meanwhile, are endeavouring to remove the gas from the tanker as a safety measure.

The road blockade has hit the travel industry hard and taxi and private bus services to Kasara from Nashik had been suspended since morning. The service to Mumbai has also been badly affected.

Efforts are underway to divert the traffic to Nashik from Mumbai via the Malshej Ghat and the traffic to Mumbai from Nashik via Jawahar. However, all measures have proved unsuccessful so far.

A booking clerk with Saroj Travels, Nandu Lakhalgaonkar, informed that the travel company had to cancel all its services on the route. Around 225 passengers have cancelled their bookings, causing a loss of around Rs 75,000 to the company, he added.

Nashik District Taxi Owners Association controller B P Diwan informed that the taxi owners have been forced to call off their services since morning.

Meanwhile, according to a report from Thane, the Thane rural police has said the mishap occurred last evening, leading to gas leakage following which, the vehicular traffic on the highway was held up.

A couple of tankers have reached the spot from Mumbai and are busy transferring the gas from the overturned tanker to the smaller tankers and the work might continue till the middle of the night and the traffic resumed tomorrow morning.

UNI