39 people were killed. It was a once-in-a-lifetime piece. This phase is the terminal phase of victims as a result of the fire. A handful of cars U-turned and got back to the French portal, but the heavy trucks could neither turn, nor back up after visibility dropped to about three feet. The magnitude of death and destruction reverberated widely. He appeared to be in his 50s at the time of the fire, so its not certain hes still alive. [1] The event expanded into a catastrophe which cost the lives of 39 people. Spadino might have seen something, or heard something from one of the drivers exiting the tunnel, that made him suspect that a truck was in trouble. Published Nov 24, 2019. Four years later, in 2003, I was living in France. The tunnel opened to traffic on 19 July. Seven other people, including the tunnel's Italian security chief, received suspended terms and fines. In 2013, the one-way ticket for a car was 40.90 (41.40 on the Italian side), while the return ticket, valid for 7 days, was 51 (51.60 on the Italian side). The report revealed that Tinazzi was outside the tunnel, at the French portal, when the Belgian truck entered; Id been right about that much. 20 another refuge and closed the fire door, which guaranteed safety from a fire for four hours. The interviews I conducted with his sister and a few close friends were heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. The initial journey through the tunnel was routine. 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. The first, Seconds from Disaster Tunnel Inferno (aired 2004), was a reconstruction of the events leading up to and during the disaster and the conclusions of the investigation that followed. So there was a motorcycle guy who died in the fire, and a motorcycle guy who rescued several people; they just werent the same person. The fire trapped around 40 vehicles in dense and poisonous smoke containing carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. On 24th March 1999 a transport truck caught fire while driving through the Mont Blanc tunnel between Italy and France. Mont Blanc looming over Lake Leman, in the Swiss Alps. He could have turned back, but he didnt. [2] He was also given a special gold medal by the motorcycle sport governing body Fdration Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). In the end, we all believe in the things that help us get through our days. Over the next 35 years of uneventful service, those superlatives were taken for granted. tunnelmb.net Wikipedia March 24, 1999, 10:54 a.m.: a Belgian truck driver rushes into the Mont-Blanc tunnel, but very quickly, cars flash his headlights. Abstract and Figures. 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). As the trucks cargo burned, it produced dense, toxic smoke that billowed back towards France. Introduction. Maybe like Italian motorcycle magazines, the newspapers quietly started telling the truth about him, without ever admitting the initial error. A spokesman for the. Temperatures soared to 1,000C. The damage to the tunnel was so severe that it took almost three . Thats the one magazine every other motorcycle editor reads, and so several more ran it in translation. While the legend of the biker was exaggerated, the horror of the fire there 20 years ago and its impact on tunnel safety cannot be overstated.CreditSamuel Zeller for The New York Times. . Nearly 2,000 people died and some 9,000 were injured in the disaster, which flattened more than 1 square mile (2.5 square km) of the city of Halifax. 38 road users and a fireman lost their lives in the . The system proved utterly incapable of pumping in cold air or removing the thick fumes from the burning margarine and flour and the loads of the other blazing trucks, including, it is believed, a tanker containing chlorine. ), Antoine Chandellier is a French journalist who has reported on the Haute Savoie region for decades. The original fire doors on the cubicles were rated to survive for two hours. He closed the fire door and waited. Corrections? Eleven bodies had been accounted for by yesterday afternoon but now up to 30 more people are feared missing. 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. Le tunnel du Mont-Blanc tait en son temps le plus long tunnel routier au monde. At 10:55, the tunnel employees triggered the fire alarm and stopped any further traffic from entering. Although hed lived in the close-knit Val dAosta region since birth, all most people knew about him was that he loved motorcycles, and rode at every opportunity. Defendants in the trial included: The exact cause of the fire is disputed. Berthier talked to me about the first Memorial Spadino biker gathering. The tunnel diverts traffic that used to crawl through downtown. However, most studies of fire toxicity have been regarding lethality, for . A Deadly Blaze in the Alps Made a Biker a Hero and Tunnels Safer for All, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/mont-blanc-tunnel-fire-anniversary-rescue.html. In 2016, we had Jean-Marc perform a safety review of the Port of Miami Tunnel, Mr. Hodgkins recalls. the legal notices related to the use of my personal data. All of them survived but their commanding officer, who died in a hospital. A few vehicles from the Italian side passed the Volvo truck without stopping. Called the Mont Blanc Vehicular Tunnel, the stretch opened 12 years later. Emergency shelter No. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Mont Blanc Tunnel is not like any other road tunnel: at 11.6 kilometers long, it was the world's longest road tunnel when it opened for traffic on July 19, 1965. They were blocked at garage 22 and had also abandoned their vehicles, and searched for trapped groups of firefighters who had taken refuge in the fire cubicles. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Some vehicles were still burning yesterday morning; others had been buried by rubble from the collapsed lining of the tunnel. With a length of 11.6km, the Mont Blanc Tunnel is constructed from one tube through which the traffic flows in both directions. In 2003, with what felt like an angel on my shoulder, I wrote a story that became a myth. I should have questioned how Tinazzi managed to operate in the French zone, when fully kitted firemen could not. For what its worth, Im glad it fell to others to break the truth to bikers in Val dAosta. I went to the tunnel control center, and to the local Carabinieri post, where I spoke to managers and cops who must have known that the accounts published in 1999 were exaggerated. Some of the cars from the French side managed to turn around in the narrow two-lane tunnel to retreat back to France, but navigating the road in the dense smoke that had rapidly filled the tunnel quickly made this impossible. Searching for Spadino. That always made my day. Webcams Account verification Call for Bids. 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. 17 inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Theyd already made several annual pilgrimages to the tunnel in his honor. Chapter 3 "Lessons learned from recent fires". Opened in 1965 mainly for tourism and regional trade purposes there is a great deal of controversy surrounding the use of the tunnel by international Heavy Goods Vehicles - particularly after a disaster in 1999 in which 39 victims died in a fire which was started by a truck. [Read the original Times coverage of the 1999 fire at the Mont Blanc Tunnel.]. Within a minute or two, it caught fire. The Mont Blanc Tunnel is a highway tunnel between France and Italy, under the Mont Blanc mountain in the Alps. Some had been upgraded in the thirty-four years since construction of the Mont Blanc Tunnel to survive for four hours. If I Googled Pierlucio Tinazzi with my language preference set to English, the top results linked to my story or follow-up pieces by others. Northeast of Mont Blanc's summit, the tunnel is about 15km (10mi) southwest of the tripoint with Switzerland, near Mont Dolent. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. At the time, considering that four years had already gone by since the fire, I concluded that French and Italian bureaucrats were deliberately dragging the investigation out, to keep the records sealed, so that neither side would ever have to accept blame. After analyzing the records, he noticed something unusual. When built, it was the worlds longest road tunnel, linking the French and Italian highway systems and shortening truck routes between Italys industrial north and other parts of Europe. The Mont Blanc Tunnel was originally managed by the two building companies. This was not yet considered a fire emergency. [9], This led to a three-year tunnel closure until 9 March 2002. They plunged into thick, toxic smoke. [3] Authorities compounded the chimney effect by pumping in further fresh air from the Italian side, escalating the fire whist trapping toxic fumes inside. There were 29 deaths of people trapped inside of vehicles, and nine more died trying to escape on foot. On 3/24/1999 the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire occurred when a truck carrying 12 tons of flour and 9 tons of margarine entered the French side of the 7.2-mile tunnel connecting France and Italy in the Alps. At 11:10 six Chamonix firefighters entered the tunnel, but were blocked at the garage 17, 2700 meters from the truck. It is one of the major trans-alpine routes, and up to a third of Italy's freight passed through it, with 766,000 heavy goods vehicles using the tunnel in 1998. 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. Direction Italy - France. Some victims escaped to the fire . 99 Tunnel. A detailed description of the Mont Blanc, Tauern and St. Gotthard fires including the original configuration of the tunnels, and a step-by-step guide to the incident, fire progression, and the behaviour of operators, emergency services and users, as well as the lessons to be drawn can be foundinthe technical report 05.16B Systems and equipment for fire and smoke control in road tunnels. by red crosses) or closing of the tunnel (by traffic lights), are often neglected if not enforced by additional means (eg. The 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire case uses a time-line approach with discussion of events during each time period. Members of a direct response crew in the firefighter hangar on the French side. YouTube isn't a fan of videos regarding "graphic" content. The fire spread over 34 vehicles and was finally extinguished after 53 hours. Witnesses reported that the fire had very quickly become too intense to drive past. He had been devastated when his wife, who hated the alpine winters, left him and returned to her native Puglia in the far south. Some lessons learned can be given as examples, such as: However, it is not possible to give generally applicable recommendations on the basis of these findings because these may be different in dependence of the specific conditions of an individual country and an individual tunnel. A statement from the Mont Blanc Tunnel and Autoroute, made up of the French and Italian agencies that operate the tunnel, said today that ''despite extreme difficulties in counting the. Pierlucio had turned down a promotion to. Except for his uniform and motorcycle, he was entirely inconspicuous. The next thing I realized was that information denied to me in 2003 had come out at trial in France in 2005. . misbehaviour of car drivers seems to be the most common cause of tunnel incidents and may also cause problems in incident management (like impeding access of emergency services to the site of incident), in case of a fire drivers sometimes try to pass by the vehicle on fire to continue their ride, despite the potential danger caused by fire and smoke, traffic management measures such as closing of a lane (eg. And my curiosity finally got the better of me. When it was opened it was the worlds longest and deepest road tunnel. He appeared to be trying to catch up to the truck that sparked the catastrophe, witnesses said. The Italian company responsible for operating the tunnel, SITMB, paid 13.5 million ($17.5 million US) to a fund for the families of the victims. P. Blomqvist, M. Simonson-McNamee, in Fire Toxicity, 2010 Simulated vehicle fire in road tunnel. In most of these, human negligence is somehow involved. When the reports of Tinazzis daring and tragic motorcycle rescue first reached North America, I pitched the biggest US motorcycle magazine, Cycle World, a feature on him, but I never heard back from the editor. Both French and Italian firefighters criticised the ventilation system, unchanged since the tunnel was built and attacked in an official report last year. The narrow tunnel turned into a furnace. It connects the highway systems of France and Italy, and cuts an hour off transport times between Italys industrial north and the rich markets beyond the Alps. Other vehicles travelling through the tunnel became . In Italy, he says, We have a disaster or a deadly happening involving several people every week. I traveled to Val dAosta on my own dime to write a story that I eventually came to call Searching for Spadino.. douard Balladur, former president of the French company operating the tunnel (from 1968 to 1980), and later Prime Minister of France, underwent a witness examination. ChamonixCourmayeur11.68.6 THE 2001 GOTTHARD ROAD TUNNEL FIRE With its single tube of 17 km in length, roughly 7 million vehicles per year and an average of 4,000 trucks each working day, the Gotthard road tunnel is undoubtedly overstressed. There were no casualties. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}455358N 65151E / 45.8995N 6.8642E / 45.8995; 6.8642. Remy Chardon, former president of the French company operating the tunnel, was convicted and received a two-year suspended jail term; he was also fined approximately. The tunnel is 11.611km (7.215mi) in length, 8.6m (28ft) in width, and 4.35m (14.3ft) in height. [13] In 2016, the one-way ticket for a car cost 43.50 (44.20 on the Italian side). Italian highway network. Also known as: Mont Blanc Vehicular Tunnel, Mount Blanc Tunnel. On 24th March, 1999, a Volvo lorry travelling from France to Italy stopped and burst into flames midway through the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Italian firefighters finally reached the epicentre of the blaze yesterday, 48 hours later. Investigations following the horrific tunnel fire that claimed the lives of 39 travellers and closed the vital France-Italy Alpine route to all traffic in March 1999, revealed that safety aspects of the Mont Blanc highway tunnel fell far short of adequate standards for the busy 11.4km single-tube, two-lane, bi-directional road tunnel. A group of French firefighters took refuge in one of the new safety zones but one of them died of a heart attack. Grard Roncoli, the head of security at the tunnel, was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail plus an additional two-year suspended sentence, the heaviest sentence levied against any of the defendants. 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. The Italian side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. In less than two hours, the tunnel was reopened to traffic. A few minutes after Mr. Tinazzi rode in, two trucks from the Chamonix Fire Department arrived carrying 14 firefighters. The driver stopped, about three miles from daylight in both directions, and with a mile of solid rock above him. Nothing in the official record suggests his motivation. But I never really dug back into it. We have recently seen the 18th anniversary of one of the most serious road tunnel incidents in Europe, when on 24 March 1999, in the Mont Blanc tunnel, a vehicle carrying flour and margarine was involved in a deadly fire which claimed so many lives. 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. I spent a week seeking out his family, friends, and coworkers and imploring them to talk to me. Hence a systematic analysis of less severe, but more frequent incidents (collisions and fires) may provide a more representative picutre of real tunnel incidents. In 1997, a fire detection system was installed along with centralized safety equipment management, and new variable message signs.