Overview
- Shortly after 17:00 near the Lüneburger Heide rest area, a 29-year-old driver detached a burning semi-trailer, which then burned out and forced full closures in both directions.
- In the later incident around 23:20 near the Soltau-Süd junction, a hazardous-goods trailer carrying about 50 tonnes of lithium batteries caught fire.
- Firefighters contained the second blaze largely to the trailer’s chassis, preventing the flames from reaching the battery cargo.
- The 30-year-old driver from the second incident suffered smoke inhalation while disconnecting the trailer and was taken to a hospital.
- Both directions were fully closed twice and reopened in stages, with Hamburg-bound lanes cleared after roughly 45 minutes each time and Hannover-bound traffic resuming around 01:30 in the second case, as recovery and cleaning continued into Wednesday.