Another tunnel fire in Alps

The Tauern Tunnel under the Alps in Austria had a nasty smash and truck fire May 29, just weeks after the Mont Blanc tunnel catastrophe Mar 24 in which 42 people died. Both tunnels will be out of service for months with major losses of toll revenue and large repair bills. At best the fires will see a new level of attention focussed on safety. At worst they will see people denied the benefits of tunnels in government over-reaction. Both tunnels are single tubes, 2x1 lanes. In neither case was the cause a head-on collision, but early reports are that the Tauern fire involved a rear-ender collision. One of the safety advantages of 2x2-lanes is that they cater to drivers wanting to do different speeds by allowing for easy overtaking, and thereby reduce tail-gating and rear-enders. The In the case of the Mont Blanc fire a major emerging issue is that the state toll operator had no fire-fighting crew on contract and was completely dependent on the small towns nearby to provide fire-fighters. Since the tunnel provided no financial support to town fire-fighting budgets, the local fire-fighters did little to practice tunnel firefighting.

The fire safety experts say that what is vital in fighting a tunnel fire is speed of response. Tunnels are normally covered by surveillance cameras. Can’t these be used to direct fire extinguishing foam onto a fire from remotely contolled pan & tilt nozzles distributed at intervals down the length of the tunnel?