Emergency workers were mid-Monday morning still in the process of clearing the scene of an accident in South Coast Road, Durban, which earlier in the morning saw a truck loaded with wooden panels overturn onto a passing cyclist.
SAPS Search and Rescue as well as Rescue Care responded to the accident.
Miraculously, the cyclist escaped with just a fractured ankle.
The pile of panels is unstable and clearing them involves the painstaking process of removing each one individually.
It is expected to take several more hours.
The cyclist was crushed beneath a truckload of wooden planks, after the vehicle carrying them overturned on him early on Monday morning.
Rescue Care's Garrith Jamieson said the accident took place on the corner of South Coast and Bayhead Roads, in south Durban, some time before 6.30am.
"Paramedics are on scene," he said, "The truck overturned and its load fell on a cyclist who was riding past".
Jamieson said the cyclist had become trapped beneath the wooden planks but that advanced life support paramedics had managed to free him.
He was being treated on scene and was expected to be transported to a local hospital for further care.