A delicate mission to remove the wreckage of a 24-tonne garbage truck from the roof of a block of flats in Happy Valley ended in failure for a second day yesterday when a crane snapped.
The incident forced 20 families from three blocks of flats in Village Terrace to spend a second night in temporary accommodation after the freak accident on Sunday morning.
Driver Sze Chun-hing, 32, and Leung Yuk-chun, 39, were killed when their truck skidded off Stubbs Road and careered down a 100-metre slope before landing on the roof of a three-storey building. A third man, To Hing-sam, 21, survived the crash and was in stable condition in Queen Mary Hospital.
Contractors worked overnight to cut the truck into parts to allow the crane to lift them but the load proved too heavy.
'The room for manoeuvre was very limited. Our crane got in, but couldn't move freely,' Hong Kong Island traffic police Senior Superintendent Pang Yan-wing said. 'The crane bent when it was lifting the truck and we had to remove the damaged crane and get a new one.'
Removal work will start again today. Police also said an initial probe led them to believe the truck might have entered a bend at too high a speed, before crashing through the metal barrier.