A 45-year-old from the district of Gmunden was lucky in misfortune: when she was traveling on the B145 in the direction of Bad Goisern on Tuesday morning, a tree trunk around ten meters long and 50 centimeters thick thundered down in front of her car near the village of Lauffen Roadway. The woman was lucky because her car had not been hit directly by the trunk, which had fallen in free fall from a height of about 30 meters. Bad luck because she couldn’t stop in time and crashed into the beech tree.
The woman sustained injuries of an undetermined degree in the collision, police said on Tuesday evening. She was treated by Red Cross paramedics and taken to a hospital. The survey by two officers from the Gmunden Alpine Police revealed that the tree trunk should have slipped around 80 meters above the rockfall protection over the B145. He broke through the net with full force and then fell about 30 meters in free fall onto the street.
The beech tree had a brown core and is likely to have fallen over during the thunderstorms driven by storm depression Maya on Sunday evening. Due to the heavy rainfall, she then began to slide on the sloping and impassable terrain. The roadway was cleaned by the emergency services of the Bad Ischl, Lauffen and Pfandl fire departments. The road maintenance department repaired the rockfall protection.
Source: Nachrichten
