Second serious A39 three-car crash in fortnight

EMERGENCY services were this morning dealing with a second serious road accident on the A39 outside Minehead in little more than a fortnight.
The three-car crash happened just after 7 am today, Tuesday, January 22, on the Dunster straight near the sawmills works.
The drivers of the three vehicles, which were a Mini Cooper, a Vauxhall Calibra, and a Peugeot 307, were thought to have suffered serious injuries and were trapped in their vehicles.
An ambulance crew was on the scene within three minutes of the alert, followed by a fire and rescue crew from Minehead Fire Station, and they were joined by a second crew from Williton and a rescue tender from Taunton.
The firefighters used cutting gear to remove the roofs and doors of the vehicles to free the trapped casulaties, two women and a man, who were then rushed to Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton.
Long queues of traffic built up as the A39 was closed for several hours and motorists were diverted at Carhampton onto the Brendon Hills and back through Dunster.
Even children walking along the A39 to school in Minehead were turned back by police because the crash left so much debris lying around.
The clean-up operation was expected to continue well into the late morning with the road remaining closed.
The earlier accident, on January 7, also involved three cars a little further along the Dunster straight and resulted in an elderly woman being cut from her car and flown by air ambulance to hospital with a suspected broken pelvis.