News

A dying driver has been praised as a hero after he crawled from the wreckage of his Calor Gas tanker and used his mobile phone to warn of a potential explosion. Helpless onlookers - beaten back by escaping gas - watched as Peter Williams eventually lost consciousness. His telephone was still connected to the 999 control when he was rescued by firemen wearing breathing apparatus. "All he was concerned with was getting people clear of the area," said a County Durham Ambulance Service spokesman.  "He was a very brave man and his actions after the crash were heroic."

Williams, who qualified as an HGV driver while in the RAF, was about to make his first delivery of the day [18 July] when his vehicle containing 13,000 litres of liquid petroleum gas veered off the C30 near Wolsingham, County Durham. After demolishing a stone wall it somersaulted down a 50ft embankment, landing on the Weardale Tourist Railway only yards from the town's station. One of the first residents on the scene described listening to the 25-year-old driver talking to the emergency services on his mobile as the railway cutting filled with a "choking cloud of invisible gas".

Williams, of Smithfield Road, Darlington, was taken by air ambulance to Newcastle General Hospital where he died. A 100-metre cordon was thrown around the scene as police evacuated homes and holidaymakers from a nearby caravan park. Engineers later discovered the gas was escaping from a ruptured underground main and not from  the damaged seven-tonne tanker. The police have so far failed to discover the cause of the crash.

This is the second gas tragedy to hit Wolsingham. Eight weeks ago a 40-year-old driver died when his delivery van carrying oxyacetylene cylinders exploded in the town's Market Square.