In less than two hours, the tunnel was reopened to traffic. This channel is for documentaries for educational use. Over the years, there have been a few occasions when complete strangers thanked me for writing, Searching for Spadino. That always made my day. In 2016, we had Jean-Marc perform a safety review of the Port of Miami Tunnel, Mr. Hodgkins recalls. [9], This led to a three-year tunnel closure until 9 March 2002. Of the initial fifty people trapped by the fire, twelve survived, all of them from the Italian side. A French engineer, Jean-Marc Berthier, led development of a unified safety protocol for the Franco-Italian venture, and served as the tunnels administrator for the next few years. Some vehicles were still burning yesterday morning; others had been buried by rubble from the collapsed lining of the tunnel. Mont Blanc Tunnel (Chamonix-Mont-Blanc/Courmayeur, 1965) - Structurae The first thing I realized was that the story I wrote in 2003 had gone viral before going viral was really a thing. Otherwise it was conventionally driven from two headings, the Italian and French crews beginning work in 1958 and 1959, respectively, and meeting in August 1962. In 2010, the average traffic volume was 4,945 vehicles per day, or around 1.80 million vehicles per year. 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. An investigation found no evidence of a design fault with the truck. So you can imagine why newspapers and magazines are not interested in revising [the] account.. 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. As I write this, Ive spent the last week going back over 76 pages of handwritten notes I made on that trip. He was, unromantically, driving a Renault Express minivan. 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. The Italian side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. ICYMI:A reporter asked for 20 years of lottery winner data. It felt like someone I had been married to for years had been cheating on me all along. It was a once-in-a-lifetime piece. Mont-Blanc tunnel fire: what lessons 24 years later? - Archyde Il a t mis en service en juillet 1965. P. Blomqvist, M. Simonson-McNamee, in Fire Toxicity, 2010 Simulated vehicle fire in road tunnel. On 24 March 1999, a transport truck caught fire while driving through the Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy. Thats the one magazine every other motorcycle editor reads, and so several more ran it in translation. The Mont Blanc Tunnel was originally managed by the two building companies. The Mont Blanc tunnel, opened in 1965, underwent a major three-year renovation after the fire, with computerised detection equipment, extra security bays and a parallel escape shaft. Toll Rises to 35 in Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire - New York Times However, most studies of fire toxicity have been regarding lethality, for . The fire resulted in million of dollars in damage, thirty-nine deaths, and a three-year closure of the tunnel. A trial has opened in France to establish responsibility for a fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel which killed 39 people almost six years ago. The tunnel passes almost exactly under the summit of the Aiguille du Midi. Of course now, Im embarrassed that it took me 14 years to correct the record. The Mont Blanc Tunnel | SeeChamonix.com All of them survived but their commanding officer, who died in a hospital. Nicholas Borghi is a skier, heading from his home in Italy to ski resorts in France. These remote sites are also used as staging areas, to smooth the peaks of commercial traffic. I suppose a part of me always worried the story was too good to be true. A cargo truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire while passing through the tunnel and when the driver stopped . French police announced last night that as many as 40 trucks and cars may have been engulfed by the fire, making it probably the worst road tunnel accident in history. The Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire | A Short Documentary - YouTube In 2011, there were an average of 5,113 vehicles per day (about 1.87 million vehicles per year). 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. The International Motorcycle Federation, the world governing body of motorcycle sport, presented its highest award to his family. 677 Mont Blanc Tunnel Premium High Res Photos - Getty Images 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 would have been the story that led my obituary. Opening ceremony at Chamonix, France, of the seven mile tunnel under Mont Blanc on July 16, 1965 . It was immediately obvious, as I began to read, that Spadino couldnt have saved anyone. By then tales of Tinazzis bravery had already spread far and wide. [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. At this point, there were at least 10 cars and 18 trucks in the tunnel that had entered from the French side. Mont-Blanc tunnel fire: what lessons 24 years later? Fires in long traffic tunnels are rare. The lessons learnt are summarised in Table 3.5 of this report. 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. Mont Blanc Tunnel traffic. . 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 links Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France with Courmayeur, Aosta Valley, Italy, via the French Route Nationale 205 and the Italian Traforo T1, in particular the motorways serving Geneva and Turin. Italian firefighters finally reached the epicentre of the blaze yesterday, 48 hours later. Reporters wrote background stories about Tinazzi, but had little to go on. Pierlucio had turned down a promotion to. 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. The regional newspapers that reported on him in 1999 didnt have online editions; my story, posted a few years later, was the first on the web. Create your free account to access the additional media materials and receive alerts when new contents are published. March 27, 1999 5:00am. At each 300 m, there are rest areas for vehicles with 3.15m width by 30m long located on the alternative side of the roadways . 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. Three companies were fined up to US$180,000 each. 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. An honor guard filled the tiny cemetery where he was buried. A control room on the French side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. While the legend was exaggerated, the horror of the fire and its impact on tunnel safety cannot be overstated. Had he really forgotten, I wondered, or was there something he didnt want to tell me? These security measures were taken as a consequence of the 1999 tunnel fire. [1] The event expanded into a catastrophe which cost the lives of 39 people. It was an ordinary truck with ordinary cargo: nine tons of margarine and 12 tons of flour. In death, hed become an unofficial patron saint of Italian bikers. 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. It has cross-passages every 450 feet so that, in a fire, people can escape through the other tunnel. . In the aftermath, major changes were made to the tunnel to improve its safety. I would never have traveled to Val dAosta in search of the heros backstory. Forty-one people died in the March 24 fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel connecting France with Italy, which burned for two days. The tunnel underwent major changes in the three years it remained closed after the fire. Unfortunately, he failed to return from his final visit into the tunnel and himself became a victim of the tragic inferno. 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. People think of tunnels as a hole through the ground, he said, but thats not the case anymore. The Italian company [that administered that end of the tunnel] also wanted an Italian hero, because they knew that as legal responsibility for the disaster was assigned, they were in opposition to the French company.. 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. They plunged into thick, toxic smoke. Pierlucio Tinazzi (Italian pronunciation:[pjrluto tinattsi]; 27 December 1962 24 March 1999) was an Italian security guard who died while trying to rescue victims of the 1999 Mont Blanc tunnel fire. The original fire doors on the cubicles were rated to survive for two hours. [5] In 1962, the French and Italian drilling teams met on 4 August. I was not alone in making Spadino a hero. 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. A year after the fire, thousands of bikers gathered at the Italian portal to commemorate him. ), Antoine Chandellier is a French journalist who has reported on the Haute Savoie region for decades. 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]. 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.
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