22/02/2003 00:00
TW
0

FIVE vehicles were involved in a multiple pile up and two people rushed to hospital at the accident black spot in front of the Balearic university yesterday while paramedics and police were also called to an accident along the via Cintura near Genova. The university pile up happened at 9.35am, just 500 metres from the entrance to the campus and the security service mounted a major emergency operation, fearing the worst. Two of the injured needed to be taken to hospital and four other victims were treated by para-medics at the accident scene. The pile up happened on a short straight stretch of road between two bends just in front of the university's tourism centre and caused traffic chaos. Traffic police closed the road off while the emergency services and fire fighters attended the scene helped by families of the victims who had rushed to the crash scene as soon as they heard of the accident. Long tail backs, over two kilometres in the case of traffic leaving Palma, built up as the two lane road remained closed until 11am and many drivers turned back to the city. Three of the wrecked vehicles were pulled off the road and on to the campus while the others ended up by the road side as a result of the crash. Traffic police confirmed that two vans and three cars were involved in the pile up and that crash investigators will return to the scene this morning in a bid to establish how the accident happened. Road improvement work on the Palma to University stretch of the Valldemossa road is underway as it has become one of the island's worst accident black spots over recent years and families of the victims said yesterday that the project can not be finished soon enough. The two-lane road handles a huge amount of traffic, one of the reasons the local government wants to link the university with the centre of Palma by rail. Elsewhere, a delivery van spun off the via Cintura ring road near Genova, rolling over on to its roof in the central reservation yesterday. The driver of the van was treated for minor injuries.