A link between France and Italy, its crossing needs a dozen minutes. It would have been the story that led my obituary. Reporters described him making four trips into the tunnel, ferrying people out on his motorcycle. The judicial inquiry is expected to concentrate on the safety standards of the 34-year- old single-bore tunnel - especially the absence of an escape tunnel and the adequacy of the ventilation system. Mr. Connell served as chairman of the associations technical committee on tunnel safety from 2005 until 2015. At 10:53, the driver of the vehicle, Gilbert Degrave, stopped 6 km into the 11.6 km tunnel, in attempt to fight the fire but he was suddenly forced back when the payload violently combusted. The 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire case uses a time-line approach with discussion of events during each time period. Pierlucio Tinazzi, an Italian security guard who died attempting to rescue a truck driver, was posthumously awarded Italy's Medaglia d'Oro al Valore Civile.[6]. P. Blomqvist, M. Simonson-McNamee, in Fire Toxicity, 2010 Simulated vehicle fire in road tunnel. The seven-mile-long bore, linking France and Italy, carries up to 4,000 trucks a day, many times the level of traffic for which it was designed in the early 1960s. The tunnel, opened with great fanfare in 1965, is seven miles long. One account reported it to be a cigarette stub carelessly thrown at the truck, which supposedly entered the engine induction snorkel above the cabin, setting the paper air filter on fire. 99 Tunnel carries two stacked roadbeds, in an immense single-bore tunnel under downtown, running for nearly two miles. The Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror Fascinating Horror 1.02M subscribers Subscribe 511K views 7 months ago #Documentary #TrueStories #History "On the 24th. Le tunnel des Tauern a t ouvert en 1975, celui du St. Gothard en 1980. It fulfilled a 150-year-old dream and is of great economic importance, providing a significantly shortened year-round automotive route between the two countries. The sentence was upheld on appeal. He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. ChamonixCourmayeur11.68.6 ICYMI:A reporter asked for 20 years of lottery winner data. Outside, in the tunnel, Tinazzis motorcycle melted into the roadbed. [7] The closest smoke detector was out of order, and French emergency services did not use the same radio frequency as those inside the tunnel. Many difficulties, including an avalanche that swept the Italian camp in which three workers were killed and more than 30 injured, were overcome during its construction, and, when the tunnel opened in 1965, it was the longest vehicular tunnel in the world. Many drivers near the blaze who attempted to leave their cars and seek refuge points were quickly overcome due to toxic components of the smoke, mainly hydrogen cyanide. Or, he might simply have chosen that moment to make a routine return trip to Italy. The next morning, digging deeper, I uncovered a 97-page, minute-by-minute account of the fire, produced by, Le Service Rgional de Police Judiciaire de Lyon. ICYMI:WSJreporter explains why he was fired, Fdration Internationale de Motocyclisme. It began on March 24, 1999 when a Volvo FH12 semi-truck from Belgium, carrying a cargo of nine tons of margarine and 12 tons of flour, stopped to pay the toll at the French portal of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Temperatures reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and it took a week before the tunnel cooled enough for forensic investigators to reach the bodies. It links Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France with Courmayeur, Aosta Valley, Italy, via the French Route Nationale 205 and the Italian Traforo T1 (forming the European route E25), in particular the motorways serving Geneva (A40 of France) and Turin (A5 of Italy). Thirty-five people died in a fire that turned a stretch of the Mont Blanc road tunnel between France and Italy into a furnace, regional authorities said yesterday. The fire trapped around 40 vehicles in dense and poisonous smoke containing carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. They saved several people, ferrying them out to the Italian portal. The major fire incidents of Mont Blanc, Tauern and St. Gotthard (1999 and 2001) led to an increased awareness of the possible impact of incidents in tunnels. They retreated into two fire refuges, small rooms with a dedicated air supply carved into the side of the tunnel every few hundred feet, and closed the fire doors. "Inside the vehicles, you can see skeletons and human remains but it is impossible to say how many," an Italian official said. . Two decades ago, 39 people died inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel in a fire so horrific it changed safety standards forever. 28/04/2023 07:47 Traffic will be totally stopped from 02/05/2023 19:30 to 03/05/2023 06:00 due to extraordinary maintenance works. but more importantly the blaze made operators and designers of other tunnels re-examine fire risks. Other vehicles travelling through the tunnel became . A few minutes after Mr. Tinazzi rode in, two trucks from the Chamonix Fire Department arrived carrying 14 firefighters. In the aftermath, major changes were made to the tunnel to improve its safety. The tunnel, opened with great fanfare in 1965, is seven miles long. Any people in the security bays now have video contact with the control centre, so they can communicate with the people trapped inside and inform them about what is happening in the tunnel more clearly. TV documentaries were also made concerning the disaster, all distributed worldwide and focusing on either safety aspects or the circumstances that turned what should have been a serious, but controllable incident into a disaster. Fires in European tunnels have clearly shown the risks and consequences of tunnel fires with large vehicles. The police deposed hundreds of witnesses and experts, studied all the security logs and video, and analyzed thousands of photos and other pieces of forensic evidence. The last few drivers who made it into France said the motorcyclist had appeared to be trying to catch up to the burning truck. [13] In 2016, the one-way ticket for a car cost 43.50 (44.20 on the Italian side). I suppose I would sympathize with a local reporter who on deadline, in the chaos of those first days conflated events from both ends of the tunnel. All the deceased were on the French side, and were ultimately reduced to bones and ash by the intense heat. 17 inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel. The tragic fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel of 24 March 1999, with 39 victims, and the subsequent fires in the Tauern (May 1999) and in the Gotthard (October 2001 . Four years later, in 2003, I was living in France. The interviews I conducted with his sister and a few close friends were heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. And he soft-pedaled his actions in the days after the fire, because he didnt want to take anything away from Tinazzis sacrifice. Other motorists were overcome by fumes as they tried to run to safety. The devastating fire led many countries to issue revised safety standards for tunnel design and engineering, including sprinkler systems, emergency response plans, and two-way ventilation systems that can quickly withdraw suffocating smoke. Direction Italy - France. Refuges equipped with telephones, and capable of sheltering up to 40 people were excavated every 600 metres in 1991. It reduces the route from France to Turin by 50 kilometres (30 miles) and to Milan by 100km (60mi). This had forced Italian firefighters to retreat, and they rescued 12 people from Italian side. The US magazine, ran an abridged version the next year. The last people to safely escape the tunnel in the direction of France told the investigators they thought he was trying to catch up to the burning truck. Spadino Pierlucio Tinazzi, who got his nickname, Italian for a thin, light sword, when he was young was just outside the French portal on his motorcycle. Its not clear whether he suspected trouble or thought he was making a routine trip back to the Italian portal. [5] In 1962, the French and Italian drilling teams met on 4 August. I traveled to Val dAosta on my own dime to write a story that I eventually came to call Searching for Spadino.. Le tunnel du Mont-Blanc tait en son temps le plus long tunnel routier au monde. was the first magazine to print it, in 2003. 20 another refuge and closed the fire door, which guaranteed safety from a fire for four hours. He was, unromantically, driving a Renault Express minivan. Over the years, there have been a few occasions when complete strangers thanked me for writing, Searching for Spadino. That always made my day. Tinazzi dragged him into Niche No. Part of his job involved riding back and forth through the tunnel on his motorcycle to keep traffic flowing, dispatching tow trucks and providing motorist assistance as needed. Their trucks stuck now, the firefighters retreated into two refuges. The initial journey through the tunnel was routine. the worldwide governing body for motorcycle sport posthumously awarded him a specially cast solid gold medal for motorcycle merit. A remote site for cargo safety inspection was created on each side: Aosta in Italy and Passy-Le Fayet in France. The lessons of the tragedy have guided tunnel design and engineering ever since, including recent American projects like the Port of Miami Tunnel and Seattles new S.R. As the trucks cargo burned, it produced dense, toxic smoke that billowed back towards France. Their bodies were found several hundred metres from the site of the crash, just beyond the halfway point between the French and Italian tunnel mouths. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. On 24 March 1999, a transport truck caught fire while driving through the Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy. The next thing I realized was that information denied to me in 2003 had come out at trial in France in 2005. The Mont Blanc Tunnel was originally managed by the two building companies. Earlier reports also present a statistical census of breakdowns, collisions and fires in selected tunnels, as well as the lessons to be drawn from such events for the geometric design of the tunnel, the design of the safety equipment and the operating guidelines: Send a review,a comment or a suggestionto the manual authors! At 11:39, another team of firefighters entered the tunnel from the French side but were blocked at the garage 5, 4,800 metres from the truck. Most of the victims had almost certainly suffocated before they burned. March 20, 2023 by archyde. It reads in part: The motorcyclist Pierlucio Tinazzi entered the smoke filled tunnel from the Italian side a number of times and successfully brought out on his motorcycle many motorists whose vehicles had been trapped inside the tunnel. 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