'Serious Incident' In Chunnel

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-11 11:37am

Only a banner right now, but will post links to more information as it comes along...

...the phrase 'serious incident' always gives me the willies, coming from engineers...

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-11 11:40am

Now being reported as a fire, although all passengers are apparently all right.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2008-09-11 11:43am

It was a fire in a freight train carrying lorries and their drivers. Everyone evacuated through the safety tunnels and the fire is under control.

BBC News wrote:Train traffic through the Channel Tunnel, which links England and France, has been suspended following a fire, officials said.

No-one was injured in the blaze that began at 1400 GMT in a freight train about seven miles from the French coast, Eurotunnel officials said.

Some 32 people - all of them said to be lorry drivers - were evacuated through a "safety tunnel".

French firefighters have now brought the blaze under control.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

A Eurotunnel spokeswoman was unable to say when services through the tunnel would resume.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2008-09-11 11:50am

Services are expected to resume tomorrow, which suggests the fire wasn't related to Eurostar equipment. I'm guessing it's cargo or a truck that caught fire.

Teebs · Post by **Teebs** » 2008-09-11 01:21pm

Glad no one was hurt. It's always slightly off-putting going through the tunnel and the fire isn't helping as I'm going through it on Saturday (assuming it is in fact open again).

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-11 01:32pm

Should be open again tomorrow morning. I edited the title because it wasn't catchy. UK-France tunnel? Bleh.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-11 01:41pm

Thanks!

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2008-09-11 01:52pm

I hope Mr Havo & Mrs Havo wasn't getting the train back for their flight home today....

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2008-09-11 02:02pm

Clearly, this is the work of the Large Hadron Collider.

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2008-09-11 02:06pm

Its all happened on the French side, so if its our fault, we get away Scott-free again, huzzah!

That NOS Guy · Post by **That NOS Guy** » 2008-09-11 09:08pm

Dartzap wrote:Its all happened on the French side, so if its our fault, we get away Scott-free again, huzzah!

I'm afraid you haven't been Scot-free since 1707.

I wonder what could cause the fire though, what's transported through the chunnel?

Bedlam · Post by **Bedlam** » 2008-09-12 03:21am

Looks like the situation was worse that it originally seemed

The blaze in the Channel Tunnel is still burning, after fire crews battled all night to bring it under control, French police said.

(Advertisement)
More than 300 French and British firefighters tackled the blaze overnight and have just "mastered" it, Gerard Gavory, the sub-prefect of Calais said.

The fire broke out on Thursday afternoon on board a freight train, leaving six people slightly injured and forcing the tunnel's closure.

Mr Gavory said: "The fire has been brought under control - it is not entirely out but we have mastered it. But we have to do more investigations and these will take a few hours.

"We had 200 firemen involved in the operation from our side and maybe 100 from the English side although I can't give you a precise figure."

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio station Europe-1 the cause "likely resembles something accidental".

The blaze broke out on Thursday just before 3pm on a train carrying lorries from Folkestone to Calais. Thirty-two people were evacuated, including seven British nationals. They were led to safety through a service tunnel and picked up by another train. All those injured were treated for smoke inhalation.

French authorities confirmed that there was a vehicle containing around 100kg (220lb) of a chemical known as phenol - also known as carbolic acid - close to the site on fire.

But a spokesman for local police said that it did not make the situation any more dangerous and the source of the blaze has not been identified.

The closure caused huge tailbacks on roads near the tunnel entrance as dozens of lorries were forced to park on the M20 and other surrounding roads.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080 ... 23e80.html

Teebs · Post by **Teebs** » 2008-09-12 06:43am

According to the Daily Mail (hardly the most reliable newspaper but still...) the tunnel may be closed for the forseeable future.

The BBC says one tunnel will be closed for several weeks with reduced services resuming through the other one today. Looks like my only chance to go abroad this Summer may be screwed.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-12 10:28am

I'm surprised that simply closing off all the ventilation to the section containing the fire, isn't an effective way to extinguish it.

You'd think that a fire inside a long tube with only one major opening at either end, would be simpler to deal with.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-09-12 12:31pm

Wasn't there a similar fire to this once? It was pretty bad I remember. It might not be the Channel, but somewhere in the UK.

Trouble is that you are having a fire in a tunnel, and the majority of air only has two ways to go, and the openings are really far away. Dispersion rate will be slow.

Teebs · Post by **Teebs** » 2008-09-12 02:15pm

They had a fire in the tunnel in the late 90s if I remember correctly which left it closed for 6 months, but no one died. Apparently it was hot enough that they had to reline the tunnel in that area due to damage to the concrete.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2008-09-12 04:37pm

Kanastrous wrote:I'm surprised that simply closing off all the ventilation to the section containing the fire, isn't an effective way to extinguish it.

It would take a long time for the fire to actually suffocate, if it ever did since it can just suck air down from the surface, and in the meantime the heat buildup would be massive and could start burning up the concrete of the tunnel. The Chunnel also happens to have a rather huge mass of wiring running through it, so the fire has the potential to spread over multiple kilometers if not fought directly with hoses and firefighters.

You'd think that a fire inside a long tube with only one major opening at either end, would be simpler to deal with.

Six actually, the Chunnel is three tunnels with numerous interconnections. The service tunnel has fire doors to seal it off from the two main tunnels, but the main tunnels are connected by a pair of large crossover caverns so trains can switch tracks, and I’m not aware of any doors which can isolate them individually or cut off access to the surface. The main tunnels are also linked by a series of smaller cross links, which serve to relieve air pressure ahead of fast moving trains, pushing the air into the opposite tunnel. There are also numerous large ducts built into the linings and hung from the ceilings of all three tunnels, those probably can all be physically closed off, but yeah overall it’s a pretty complex set of passages that make up the thing.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-12 04:54pm

I wrote a treatment years ago for an action/escape story set inside a Transatlantic Corridor Tunnel.

Time to dust it off and see how it reads, maybe.

Teebs · Post by **Teebs** » 2008-09-12 05:46pm

Kanastrous wrote:I wrote a treatment years ago for an action/escape story set inside a Transatlantic Corridor Tunnel.

Time to dust it off and see how it reads, maybe.

There's a fire, everyone panics briefly and then sits in the service tunnel for four hours until a train picks them up on the other side?

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-09-12 05:59pm

Teebs wrote:
Kanastrous wrote:I wrote a treatment years ago for an action/escape story set inside a Transatlantic Corridor Tunnel.

Time to dust it off and see how it reads, maybe.
There's a fire, everyone panics briefly and then sits in the service tunnel for four hours until a train picks them up on the other side?

Yeah.

I'm thinking mini-series.