Australian authorities have closed off a road due to the high temperatures which melted the road’s surface. About 50 drivers had already destroyed and melted their tires on the road. A road in North Queensland was resurfaced a few weeks ago. However, the rainy weather prevented the gravel from setting in properly. After the wet weather was over, the area experienced very high temperatures. The rise in temperature caused the asphalt to melt. The condition worsened so much that the car tires started to melt on the road.
Some travelers were also forced to abandon their cars since they sank into the melted asphalt. Driver Bridget Daley was among those trapped drivers. She told, “I was absolutely horrified to find that there were three inches of bitumen coated around all four wheels of my vehicle,” she said. “It was like we were insects caught in a spider’s web and we were sinking. There were people that were pulled up on the side of the road and they were in total and complete disbelief as to what had happened to their vehicles”.
A semi-truck owner told that the melted roadwork ruined all 34 tires of its truck. The district director Sandra Burke said that the incident was caused by a number of factors which contributed to the perfect storm of issues and melted car parts. Burke told media, “We have extreme weather conditions on Malanda Millaa Millaa Road … unusually cold weather and wet weather combined with works at hand and the short impact of the hot weather yesterday caused the situation to occur”.
Road authorities have assured that any driver who was affected by the situation will be compensated for anything that happens to their vehicle. He told ABC News that the compensation will be “assessed on a case-by-case basis”. The officials are still unsure that how the situations went so bad on the road. Tablelands Regional Council Mayor Joe Paronella said that he was in shock upon witnessing the condition of some driver’s tires. He said, “I have never seen anything like it and when the reports started coming through yesterday it was just incredible”.
He further added, “Last week a whole section of road was done by the Main Roads contractor and the gravel they put down on top did not adhere to the bitumen. We started getting reports in the middle of last week from people getting stones and gravel flying up everywhere so we’ve been trying to assist Main Roads as much as possible, we helped with brooms to get the gravel off. That was when we had cold weather and drizzle, since the weekend we’ve had the exact opposite and the bitumen, and the way I understand it because there’s no gravel, it’s leading to vehicles galore with this massive amount of tar”. A group of people is benefitting a lot from this issue. The local tire repair and automotive shops have seen several customers soon after the road melting event occurred.