{"id":461471,"date":"2026-02-06T04:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461471\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T04:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:02:14","slug":"bruce-highway-blocked-after-excavator-strikes-ilkley-road-bridge-at-tanawha-on-sunshine-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461471\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Highway blocked after excavator strikes Ilkley Road bridge at Tanawha on Sunshine Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bruce Highway has been cut at the Sunshine Coast after an excavator struck a bridge and then fell onto the road.<\/p>\n

The machine was being carried when it struck the Ilkley Road bridge at Tanawha just before 9am, damaging the bridge and blocking southbound lanes of the highway.<\/p>\n

Police initially shut the northbound lanes to allow southbound traffic to turn around.<\/p>\n

Drivers heading south were being diverted along Maroochydore Road, while the northbound traffic was sent along the Sunshine Motorway.<\/p>\n

\"Excavator<\/p>\n

Pieces of the bridge fell onto the Bruce Highway. (Supplied: Tas Chamberlain)<\/p>\n

\"Excavator<\/p>\n

The highway is blocked after the crash. (Supplied: Tas Chamberlain)<\/p>\n

Traffic was piling up with delays to be expected.<\/p>\n

Sunshine Coast Acting Inspector Scott Wiggins said Transport and Main Roads reopened the northbound lanes of the Bruce Highway just before 11am.<\/p>\n

“In my opinion, it’s significant damage, and it would have been quite a dangerous situation for motorists who were travelling behind that truck at the time,” he said from the scene.<\/p>\n

“The area is suffering from significant traffic congestion at the moment as we try to divert traffic around this incident.”<\/p>\n

Police were unaware of any injuries or further crashes linked to the main collision.<\/p>\n

Inspector Wiggins could not say when the southbound lane would reopen.<\/p>\n

\"Bruce<\/p>\n

Police say no-one was injured in the incident. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“The investigation is in its early infancy. Initial observations are that the boom of the excavator was at a height that was too high, and it just collided with the underside of the bridge,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The driver is with the police at the moment, conducting mandatory testing, but apart from that, there are no injuries.”<\/p>\n

\"Bruce<\/p>\n

A truck carrying an excavator hit a bridge on the Bruce Highway. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The bridge has been severely damaged with cracks and chunks missing from the underside support framework.<\/p>\n

Large amounts of concrete and debris littered the road alongside the wreckage of the low loader and excavator.<\/p>\n

\"Bruce<\/p>\n

The bridge was severely damaged.\u00a0 (ABC News: Jarrod Tutbury)<\/p>\n

Police were asking drivers to avoid the area.<\/p>\n

Engineers from the Department of Transport have been called to assess the condition of the bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bruce Highway has been cut at the Sunshine Coast after an excavator struck a bridge and then…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,108369,24907,236989,1154,236988,236990,44,11942],"class_list":["post-461471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bridge","tag-bruce-highway","tag-bruce-highway-traffic","tag-crash","tag-excavator","tag-ilkley-road-bridge","tag-news","tag-sunshine-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}