National Highways has assured motorists that they reopened the M6 as "quickly and as safely as possible" following incidents near Sandbach on Friday (21 August).

Sandbach's roads were gridlocked for several hours following the two incidents and residents trying to get south and out of the town found it almost impossible due to the roads being gridlocked.

One resident told how they were struck on the M6 south just above Junction 16 for four hours alongside hundreds of other vehicles.

"I was heading south to a concert at Trentham Gardens and left my house at 4.30 pm. The town was completely gridlocked. I couldn't get anywhere," said the Sandbach resident.

"I tried the M6 not knowing Junction 16 had been closed and what was ahead with the traffic and got completely stuck. There was no way of getting off between 17 and 16.

"We sat on the motorway for around four hours. It was quite a frightening experience. I finally got off at 10 pm. I really thought I was going to have to spend the night in my car. Loads of people needed the toilet."

A National Highways spokesperson said: "We appreciate how frustrating it is for people caught up in an incident like this and can reassure road users that we work hard to get the road open and traffic moving as quickly, and as safely, as possible."

The National Highways spokesperson added: "We work closely with emergency services and local authority partners when unplanned incident closures arise, and we work hard to reopen our roads as soon as it is safe to do so.

"This was a complex incident which involved a vehicle crossing from one carriageway to another and required a closure and diversion routes to allow emergency and recovery services to work safely at the scene.

"We had signs on the M6 warning of the closure many miles ahead of the scene, and as far away as the M62 and M56, to give drivers plenty of notice and the opportunity to seek alternative routes."

National Highways say the first incident occurred at 7.30am on Friday when the M6 northbound was closed on Friday between junction 18 (Middlewich) and junction 19 (Knutsford) following an HGV fire. The HGV was carrying flammable chemicals.

"Due to the nature and severity of the incident, only one lane (lane four of four) could be reopened late in the afternoon when it was safe to do so," said National Highways. "The fire caused significant damage to the road surface and resurfacing work was carried out overnight.

"The second incident saw an LGV cross over from the northbound to the southbound carriageway between junctions 16 to 15 at around 1.20pm on Friday. There was extensive damage to the central reservation safety barrier and an oil spillage.

"The motorway was initially closed at junction 16 southbound with one lane closed on the northbound. Southbound traffic was diverted via the A500 with signage directing drivers to follow the hollow square, rejoining the M6 at junction 15.

"The road fully reopened once the safety barrier had been repaired overnight."

"A number of traffic officer crews dealt with the incident working with police, recovery and clean-up crews to get the road open as soon as it was safe to do so."

Regular updates were provided on the National Highways X feed and details of diversion routes on our travel updates page here .

Would you like to know more about Sandbach?

Free from clickbait, pop-up ads and unwanted surveys, Sandbach Nub News is a quality online newspaper for our town.

Please consider following Sandbach Nub News on Facebook or X (Twitter)

We also have a weekly newsletter with the TOP FIVE stories of the week - sign up here