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'Serious fire' in Eurotunnel - service still suspended
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by Dave Keating | September 12, 2008 at 08:39 am
1419 views | 45 Recommendations | 27 comments
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UPDATE: 9:30AM PST
Service remains suspended as officials gauge the full extent of the damage.
UPDATE: 4:10PM PST
Some injuries have been reported and hundreds of passengers have been left stranded.
Eurotunnel said travel between the UK and the continent was suspended while Kent fire and rescue service said it was dealing with a serious incident in the north-running tunnel.
Thirty-two people on board the freight shuttle were taken into the service tunnel where they were subsequently picked up and taken to the service tunnel.
According to the AFP news agency 14 people were injured in the fire. It cited a French government official saying eight suffered smoke inhalation while six others received more minor injuries.
A spokesman for South East Coast ambulance service told inthenews.co.uk five of its vehicles, including four ambulances, were at the scene.
Kent firefighters were called to the incident on the French side of the tunnel at 14:57 BST, with the fire being extinguished shortly afterwards.
Seven fire engines are at the scene, the service said, working in conjunction with their French counterparts.
PREVIOUSLY:
Breaking: A fire has broken out in the Eurotunnel connecting Britain to continental Europe. The date has automatically given rise to suspicion of terrorism, but it appears the passenger trains, Eurostar, were not involved.
Apparently a truck on the shuttle which carries vehicles through the tunnel overturned and caught fire. All passengers who were in the chunnel at the time are being evacuatd through a central service tunnel.
Expect massive train chaos both in Southeast England and Northwestern continental Europe for the rest of the day.
90 percent of people travelling between Paris/Brussels and London use the eurostar trains, it accomodates a massive number of people, with 100 trains going through the tunnel each day.
The last time there was a fire in the tunnel in 1996, it took months to fix the structural damage to the tunnel. That caused enough cahos then, but since then the traffic through the tunnel has increased dramatically. If such a closure were to happen again for so long it would cause massive long-term chaos and an economic blow to Britain, the UK and Belgium.
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.
This fire is coming on the same day that Air-France announced it was launching its own high-speed train company through the tunnel which would take less than 2 hours, breaking the eurostar monopoly. Clearly there's a lot riding on the tunnel and its activity is only increasing. If anything were to go wrong with the tunnel at this crucial time it would have huge reverberations through France and Britain's economy.
Air France-KLM plans to move into the rail sector and offer its own international train service linking Paris to London and Amsterdam.
New trains will carry up to 900 passengers at a routine speed of up to 224mph, 38mph faster than the currently used TGV.
The state-owned SNCF currently dominates high-speed train travel in France but the start of 2010 will see the liberalization of EU rail traffic laws for international passengers.
Air France-KLM is in talks with Veolia, the biggest private train operator in Europe, and Alstom, which makes the TGV, about its new generation of trains known as the AGV.
The current time between London and Paris on the Eurostar is two hours 15 minutes or more.
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Dave Keating
London, United Kingdom
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (27)
at 07:39 on September 11th, 2008
I am flagging this as breaking news. It will now show up on the home page for four hours. If new developments justify it, I'll renew this flag for another cycle.
at 07:51 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
And only a week before my trip to Paris. Grrr.
at 07:53 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 09:01 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 09:48 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 10:26 on September 11th, 2008
What happened to the pictures?
at 10:28 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 11:35 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 12:33 on September 11th, 2008
Glad it wasn't a terrorist attack, and only minor injuries.
at 12:43 on September 11th, 2008
Very glad it wasn't so much worse.
at 14:46 on September 11th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 15:29 on September 11th, 2008
I come from Kent and use the Tunnel for short trips occasionally, so thanks for publishing the story.
I remember before we even had the Channel Tunnel that were fears about fires and how people would escape. I remember the 1996 one too and what a fiasco that was. There will be more traffic in the future, due to more housing being built in Kent, and the Channel Tunnel will face even more pressure. What concerns me is why the vehicle overturned? Do we have any information on this? Was the vehicle overloaded? Which company was it too?
at 15:34 on September 11th, 2008
According to Yahoo news, the lorry, worryingly, was carrying a chemical called Phenol.
at 15:38 on September 11th, 2008
According to Wikipedia, the toxic chemical the lorry was carrying was used in the Second World War as a means of rapid execution:-
In particular, phenol was used as a means of extermination by the Nazis before and during the Second World War. Originally used by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of its euthanasia program, phenol, cheap and easy to make and quickly effective, became the injectable toxin of choice through the last days of the War. Although Zyklon-B pellets were used in the gas chambers to exterminate large groups of people, the Nazis learned that extermination of smaller groups was more economical via injection of each victim one at a time with phenol instead. Phenol injections were given to thousands of people in concentration camps, especially at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Will the Chunnel Tunnel be protected from such fumes. Currently the Tunnel is closed.. but for how long?
at 15:48 on September 11th, 2008
I have just contacted Eurotunnel and asked them whether Phenol has escaped. I am waiting for their response right now. I wonder if people are trained in such fires if the chemical has escaped. Could this happen again, if lorries carry such toxic chemicals near people?
at 16:03 on September 11th, 2008
Wow, great reporting!
at 15:50 on September 11th, 2008
Do we have news about which hospitals are treating them, for their response?
at 15:57 on September 11th, 2008
More on Phenol: (Wikipedia)
"Phenol" is caustic and causes nasty chemical burns which are slow to heal. It is also a systemic poison which can be rapidly absorbed through the skin. Phenol is an effective local anaesthetic, and you may not be aware of burns immediately. Inhalation of phenol fumes is dangerous and can result in permanent loss of smell. It is one of the more dangerous chemicals in a typical biochemistry laboratory."
I notice that the mainstream media is 'glossing over the Phenol aspect of the incident' and mainly regarding it 'as a serious fire'. I hope that the casualties are being treated appropriately.
at 16:33 on September 11th, 2008
The longer you live the more you'll notice how the media seems to gloss over a lot of things ...
at 00:12 on September 12th, 2008
Yes they do.. oh and I am still waiting for Eurotunnel to reply about the toxic chemical...
at 00:18 on September 12th, 2008
Update 0915 GMT Yahoo News
"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."
at 02:35 on September 12th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 08:35 on September 12th, 2008
Update: Eurostar service remains suspended.
Source: afp.google.com
at 08:47 on September 12th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 11:59 on September 12th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 14:49 on September 12th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 16:53 on September 12th, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.