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. Most of the victims had almost certainly suffocated before they burned. The French company ATMB and the Italian company SITMB each independently manage and control one half of the tunnel. Others blamed a mechanical or electrical fault, or poor maintenance of the truck's engine. . Technical report 05.05B Fire and smoke control in road tunnels. A group of French firefighters took refuge in one of the new safety zones but one of them died of a heart attack. It passes almost directly under Europes highest peak. Other vehicles traveling through the tunnel quickly became trapped and they also caught fire as firefighters were unable to reach the transport truck. People think of tunnels as a hole through the ground, he said, but thats not the case anymore. Corrections? The fire burned for 50 hours. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The truth eventually caught up to the legend of a man who rushed in. I thought about the tunnel story on and off, usually around the anniversary of the fire. After a long chat over Skype on technical topics, I asked whether he could confirm Tinazzis actions. Please join the Patreon to keep the channel. On 24th March, 1999, the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire occurred, with Tinazzi riding into the tunnel in an attempt to save lives on the French side. Anyone can read what you share. The lessons learnt are summarised in Table 3.5 of this report. When he climbed out of the cab, flames burst from under the truck, and he leapt back. The heat was so intense and the fumes so thick that the first group of Italian firefighters who tried to approach the inferno were forced to retreat through the ventilation shafts. The data base used for the calculations are enclosed in Appendix 3 (collisions) and Appendix 4 (fires) respectively. The initial journey through the tunnel was routine. On the fifth trip, he came across a French truck driver named Maurice Lebras, who was alive but unconscious, according to messages Tinazzi communicated via a tunnel intercom. At 10:55, the tunnel employees triggered the fire alarm and stopped any further traffic from entering. The Fdration Internationale de Motocyclisme the worldwide governing body for motorcycle sport posthumously awarded him a specially cast solid gold medal for motorcycle merit. what is a normal blood pressure during sleep; kim kyle richards palm desert house; who uses communication boards; what happens if you snitch on the cartel. 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. It felt like someone I had been married to for years had been cheating on me all along. The Mont Blanc Tunnel finally reopened in 2002. All the vehicles destroyed appear to have been trapped in the inferno that followed, estimated by officials to have reached a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius. [7], The tunnel underwent extensive modernisation works in 1990, including the addition of safety features such new video surveillance cameras, 8 pressurized emergency shelters, a sprinkler system and other safety maintenance. He was Italian, but as it happened, he entered the tunnel from the French side. The Seattle tunnel includes refuges every 650 feet, which open into a passage with its own fresh air supply a tunnel within the tunnel for escape. I wonder if he ever realized his mistake, or tried to correct the record. It had been open nearly 35 years without a single fatal incident until the morning of March 24, 1999. Broadcast on March 20 at 11:15 p.m. on France 3. 99 Tunnel, said the boring machine was 57 feet in diameter, providing room for spaces for safety systems in addition to the roadways. He entered before there was any formal alert. Under the Mont Blancmountain range is a 11,6 km(around 7.2 miles) long road tunnel, connecting Francewith Italy. Tunnel du Mont Blanc - Tempratures atteintes dans la chausse et comportement au feu de la chausse, Document 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. I fell asleep that night increasingly certain that I had gotten Searching for Spadino wrong, but lacking real evidence. The tunnel passes almost exactly under the summit of the Aiguille du Midi. As I write this, Ive spent the last week going back over 76 pages of handwritten notes I made on that trip. But I still wondered how so many journalists, beginning with the local papers, and ending with myself, got the facts so wrong. 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). He was asked about the security measures that he ordered, or did not order, to be carried out. 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. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Finding any mistake in a published story is deflating. Five tunnel fires, all in Europe, resulted in 72 deaths. Eleven bodies had been accounted for by yesterday afternoon but now up to 30 more people are feared missing. Over the next 35 years of uneventful service, those superlatives were taken for granted. 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. Webcams Account verification Call for Bids. [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. [8], On the morning of 24 March 1999, the engine of a Belgian transport truck carrying volatile freight caught fire in the tunnel. I tell people, This is like a building for cars.. The Mont Blanc Tunnel was originally managed by the two building companies. It took a week for the tunnel to cool enough to recover their bodies, and those of the 36 others who had perished in the tunnel. No one could survive downwind, but a small Italian crew was able to get quite close to the fire from the other side. Devouassoux was not riding a motorcycle that day. 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. Sure enough, in December 2017, a car erupted into flames in the tunnel. Italian firefighters finally reached the epicentre of the blaze yesterday, 48 hours later. 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. Balladur claimed that the catastrophe could be attributed to the fact the tunnel had been divided into two sections operated by two companies (one in France, the other in Italy), which failed to coordinate the situation. P. Blomqvist, M. Simonson-McNamee, in Fire Toxicity, 2010 Simulated vehicle fire in road tunnel. However, the idea did not receive widespread attention until 1907, when Francesco Farinet, a Member of Parliament of the Aosta Valley, advocated constructing of the tunnel. In Seattle, the recently opened S.R. A reporter asked for 20 years of lottery winner data. Paolo Sormani, the motorcycle writer who had initially been reticent, seemed to have a change of heart a few days later, when he wrote back in Italian-accented English to explain. The Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy experienced a widely publicized fire disaster in March 1999, when a truck traveling through the 11,6 km long tunnel burst into flames 6 km into the structure. Fourteen firefighters on two trucks from the ski resort of Chamonix reached the French portal in minutes. It is 11.7 km (7.3 miles) long and crosses under the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc. The resulting fire burned for 52 hours and ended 41 lives. Chris Hodgkins is the chief executive of Miami Tunnel, the company that built and operates the three-quarter-mile tunnel connecting the Port of Miami with the Interstate highway system. This channel is for documentaries for educational use. He had been presented with medals and buried with honors long before I arrived in Val dAosta. In 2010, the average traffic volume was 4,945 vehicles per day, or around 1.80 million vehicles per year. Thats the one magazine every other motorcycle editor reads, and so several more ran it in translation. [6] Surveillance cameras were installed in 1978. 35 DEAD IN EUROPE TUNNEL FIRE. Tunnel du Mont-Blanc Traforo del Monte Bianco . 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. 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. 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. It was a week before the tunnel cooled enough for forensic investigators to recover bodies. Except for his uniform and motorcycle, he lived a life almost utterly lacking in conspicuity. 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. In the aftermath, major changes were made to the tunnel to improve its safety. 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. 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. Mont Blanc looming over Lake Leman, in the Swiss Alps. 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]. Built in 1980, the Gotthard has had increased traffic since a 1999 fire forced the closure of the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy. It is one of the longest vehicular . Jean-Marc, who until that point in our conversation had easily recalled facts and anecdotes, told me he couldnt remember the details. Reporters described him making four trips into the tunnel, ferrying people out on his motorcycle. When the Mont Blanc tunnel was built in 1965, the transalpine crossing was considered . The Mont-Blanc Tunnel, promoter of safety at international level Mont Blanc and its valleys Territory and open air A cultural crossroads Partnerships History Unitary tunnel management Corporate structure Women and men Important projects and works Details (suppliers, calls for bids, tenders and contracts) Traffic statistics Financial data News 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. Thirty-nine people were killed. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. 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. Five hours later and with no time to spare, a rescue crew reached the firemen via a ventilation duct. Four years later, in 2003, I was living in France. Unlike long- distance road and rail tunnels built more recently, it has just one bore and two lanes, one each for northbound and southbound traffic. Mont-Blanc tunnel fire: what lessons 24 years later? These security measures were taken as a consequence of the 1999 tunnel fire. I was not alone in making Spadino a hero. 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. An emblem for human courage in the face of adversity, and an inspiration for motorcyclists like me, that swept the world in its small way. Tunnel Inferno is the 2nd episode of Seconds from Disaster and explores the causes of one of the worst tunnel fires. The central ventilation hangar on the Italian side helps control the air in the tunnel. Le tunnel du St. Gothard est le plus long (16 920 m), suivi par le tunnel du Mont Blanc et le tunnel des Tauern (11 600 m et 6 400 m respectivement). While the legend was exaggerated, the horror of the fire and its impact on tunnel safety cannot be overstated. When built, it was the world's longest road tunnel, linking the French and Italian highway systems and shortening truck routes between. A few minutes after Mr. Tinazzi rode in, two trucks from the Chamonix Fire Department arrived carrying 14 firefighters. Closed-circuit television cameras were installed every few metres in 1995. The Mont Blanc Tunnel is a highway tunnel between France and Italy, under the Mont Blanc mountain in the Alps. Twenty-seven people were asphyxiated in cars and trucks. Maybe like Italian motorcycle magazines, the newspapers quietly started telling the truth about him, without ever admitting the initial error. A remote site for cargo safety inspection was created on each side: Aosta in Italy and Passy-Le Fayet in France. . Mont Blanc Tunnel, major Alpine automotive tunnel connecting France and Italy. like barriers for tunnel closure), problems of communication between the different stakeholders involved, which may be caused by various reasons, are a key issue in incident management, the systematic evaluation of individual incidents often contributes to the optimisation of emergency response procedures and cooperation and training of all organisations involved in incident management. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Seven other people, including the tunnel's Italian security chief, received suspended terms and fines. Except for his uniform and motorcycle, he was entirely inconspicuous. The Mont Blanc Tunnel was originally managed by the two building companies. Mont Blanc Tunnel re -opens 3 years after tragic fire in Chamonix, France on March 09, 2002. The tunnel is a single bore two-lane tunnel with the shape of a horseshoe with a 7m wide roadway and two 0.8 walkways on either side. I set out to write a biographical sketch of an unlikely hero. 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. research, I spoke to Jean-Marc Berthier, the engineer who reopened the Mont Blanc Tunnel after extensive renovations and safety improvements.
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