WorkSafe investigating after crane lands on Australia Post van 03:11

Well, if you're driving out of the city this afternoon, you might just want to double check where you're going because this scaffolding that fell from a construction site right onto an Australia post van on Pitt Street has caused problems right throughout the day. Now, nobody, thankfully, has been hurt. I don't know how. But Pitt Street has been closed to traffic for most of the day. They've got one lane open now. Now, news reporter James Wilson is across all the details for us and he's on the line. James, g'day.

G'day Chris. Any news when the street will open up entirely for traffic? Well we left around an hour ago and it was back to a single lane moving through there so traffic is moving slowly through there up Pitt Street towards Bathurst Street it's a one-way road but obviously safe work needs to step in police still need to investigate and those kinds of processes will need to take place so while traffic is moving it's not open at a full capacity but

I mean, a lot of your listeners may have seen those pictures by now. What an escape by these two Australia Post workers. Can you imagine driving along Pitt Street around 9.30 this morning and then bang, you know, tons of scaffolding falling right on the back of your van? They were only missed by a couple of centimetres, but these two guys...

managed to escape and Chris while we were down there this morning the driver's wife actually turned up to the scene we were standing next to her and she ran up to the police checkpoint and said please please my husband my husband and obviously police let her through and she ran up to this man a man in his 50s and it was one of those just

Most incredible embrace of pure relief you'll ever see. It's the husband and wife hugging each other. And, you know, obviously they both know that today could have been his last day on earth, judging by that van and just how close they came to near death. So what happened with this scaffolding? How did it all come apart?

So we've been told that there is a luxury apartment development that sits above the Gadigal Metro train station. That is the entire site this happened on. And they were taking down some scaffolding this morning by a crane. And as they were detaching this scaffolding and ready to hoist it down on a crane, one of the ropes snapped. So half of this scaffolding...

set up has just toppled around 80 metres. It's kind of fallen down 80 metres. It's hit a big metal beam and then it's crashed on top of the Australia Post van and then obviously onto that, it's flipped onto the road. So yeah, it's fallen a great way and the damage is evident. You can just see how hard it's hit the van and the beam above. So you've been given no ETA on when streets will reopen?

Well, no ETA on when streets will fully reopen. As I said, there are like some traffic diversions in place and people in and around the city. But the main focus for police and SafeWork now is this investigation. The site, which is operated and run by CPB contractors, the same group who actually worked on the Roselle interchange,

that's been closed down now. It's been suspended. The workers have been told to go home. SafeWork will step in and they'll start doing what they need to do to work out how this happened and hopefully make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Good on you, James. Thanks for coming on.