For what its worth, Im glad it fell to others to break the truth to bikers in Val dAosta. The truck came through the tollbooth at 10:46 CET. 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. It is one of the longest vehicular . Northeast of Mont Blanc's summit, the tunnel is about 15km (10mi) southwest of the tripoint with Switzerland, near Mont Dolent. I fell asleep that night increasingly certain that I had gotten Searching for Spadino wrong, but lacking real evidence. THE 2001 GOTTHARD ROAD TUNNEL FIRE - Transportation Research Board I fell asleep that night increasingly certain that I had gotten. According to the National Geographic documentary programme Seconds from Disaster, the fire and smoke appeared at around 10:49. But he never reached it; he stopped when the smoke became too thick. 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. With a length of 11.6km, the Mont Blanc Tunnel is constructed from one tube through which the traffic flows in both directions. 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. In Italy, he says, We have a disaster or a deadly happening involving several people every week. Save almost 80%: 10.65 instead of 48.80 one way. Except for his uniform and motorcycle, he was entirely inconspicuous. They plunged into increasingly dense smoke and, after the fire melted the tunnels electrical wiring, total darkness. I would never have traveled to Val dAosta in search of the heros backstory. 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. Such was the ferocity of the fire that the rescue workers said it was difficult to tell how many victims had perished in the wreckage. Il a t mis en service en juillet 1965. I spent a week seeking out his family, friends, and coworkers and imploring them to talk to me. 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. As I write this, Ive spent the last week going back over 76 pages of handwritten notes I made on that trip. 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 tunnel consists of a single gallery with a two-lane dual direction road. Pierlucio had turned down a promotion to. The fire burned for fifty-three hours and was estimated to have reached a temperature of 1,000C (1,830F), mainly because of the margarine load in the trailer, equivalent to a 23,000-litre (5,100impgal; 6,100USgal) oil tanker. The tunnel is equipped with the following safety facilities: Every 100 m portable fire extinguishers Every 300 m garages This was not yet considered a fire emergency. The French company ATMB and the Italian company SITMB each independently manage and control one half of the tunnel. Mr. Connell served as chairman of the associations technical committee on tunnel safety from 2005 until 2015. The memorial on the French side honoring the 39 people who died in the tunnel blaze. [1] The event expanded into a catastrophe which cost the lives of 39 people. Within the tunnel, a minimum speed of 50km/h and a maximum speed of 70km/h applies, while the prescribed distance between vehicles is 150 m; trucks are allowed to enter in groups of five. A Service Analysis of the Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire - ResearchGate He found Maurice Lebras unconscious, and dragged him into Niche No. Its not clear whether he suspected trouble or thought he was making a routine trip back to the Italian portal. Eight drivers, including the driver of the Belgian truck thought to have caused the accident, are known to have escaped before the fire reached its height. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. March 27, 1999 5:00am. 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. The told and retold story that, before finding Lebras, Spadino had exited to safety and returned over and over, rescuing 10 other people had been publicly debunked by the French judicial police in 2005. 35 die in `world's worst tunnel fire' - The Independent Forty-one people died in the March 24 fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel connecting France with Italy, which burned for two days. Please join the Patreon to keep the channel. 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. Only vehicles past the fire on the French side of the tunnel were trapped, while cars on the Italian side of the fire were mostly unaffected. The passageway is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes, particularly for Italy, which relies on this tunnel for transporting as much as one-third of its freight to northern Europe. [Read the original Times coverage of the 1999 fire at the Mont Blanc Tunnel.]. It was an ordinary truck with ordinary cargo: nine tons of margarine and 12 tons of flour. He entered before there was any formal alert. The lessons learnt are summarised in Table 3.5 of this report. [1] However, in 2019, a writer researching the story found the full description of the events in French police reports: A motorcycle security guard, Patrick Devouassoux, who survived the fire, did indeed save several people while driving a Renault Express minivan. But interest in the story really took off in April 2006 when it appeared in the UK monthly Bike. Tunnel du Mont-Blanc Traforo del Monte Bianco . 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. However, burning fuel flowed down the road surface, causing tyres and fuel tanks to explode and sending deadly shrapnel in the air, thus spreading fire to other vehicles. But all the witnesses and officials were under gag orders, and records including security video and recordings of radio traffic were sealed due to ongoing criminal and civil investigations. The tunnel, opened with great fanfare in 1965, is seven miles long. [1] Tinazzi's and Devouassoux's actions were apparently intermingled in subsequent press accounts.[1]. French highway network. It was immediately obvious, as I began to read, that Spadino couldnt have saved anyone. This motorcycle, scooter or moped-related article is a stub. The fire burned for 50 hours. While the legend was exaggerated, the horror of the fire and its impact on tunnel safety cannot be overstated. ICYMI:WSJreporter explains why he was fired, Fdration Internationale de Motocyclisme. The tunnel is notable for its solution of a difficult ventilation problem and for being the first large rock tunnel to be excavated full-facei.e., with the entire diameter of the tunnel bore drilled and blasted. They listened as a river of incandescent margarine ignited fuel tanks and burst the tires of abandoned vehicles. The association writes standards, not laws; its up to the local authorities to adopt them. 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. 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. The highway trunk from Aosta to the tunnel on the Italian side was completed in 2007.[12]. At the time of its construction, it was three times longer than any existing highway tunnel.[2]. Find Mont Blanc Tunnel stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Mont Blanc Tunnel re -opens 3 years after tragic fire in Chamonix, France on March 09, 2002. [2] Some victims were able to escape to the fire cubicles. Sure enough, in December 2017, a car erupted into flames in the tunnel. 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. Mont Blanc Tunnel Toll Prices - Get from France to Italy - Chamonix The middle of the tunnel today looking toward Italy. An investigation found no evidence of a design fault with the truck. Safely tunneling the Mont Blanc - DW - 07/17/2015 - 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. 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. [4] The narrow tunnel turned into a furnace. They were eventually rescued via a ventilation duct. A remote site for cargo safety inspection was created on each side: Aosta in Italy and Passy-Le Fayet in France. The Italian side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. I tell people, This is like a building for cars.. He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno.

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