ABSTRACT

Fires in traffic tunnels can result in real catastrophes as we had to learn at least by the recent incidents in road tunnels as in the Mt. Blanc Tunnel (France/Italy, 24.3.1999), the Tauern Tunnel (Austria, 29.5.1999), the Gotthard Tunnel (Switzerland, 24.10.2001), or in the funicular tunnel of the Kitzsteinhorn (Austria, 11.11.2000), and most recently in the Metro of Daegu (South Korea, 18.2.2003). All these incidents cost too many lifes and they taught us some new aspects which were neither known nor expected before, if we do not consider the fire in the Nihonzaka road tunnel in Japan 1979, where about 189 vehicles were involved. One of the new lessons has been the extremely fast development of the fire combined with a tremendously fast increase of temperature up to about 1000°C (Fig. 1) and even more as well as the enormous emission of masses of smoke from the very beginning of the fire. The second was the fire jump from one car to another even over sections of more than 200 m as in the Mont Blanc Tunnel where no vehicle was stopped. The third and most shocking aspect was the behaviour of many road tunnel users. Too many of them did not realise the danger to which they were exposed. They felt safer in their cars which might be right for the very first minutes and they did not want to leave back their property unobserved. If ever and finally they realised that they are extremely endangered it was too late for a successful escape. They did not save their cars, but lost their not regainable lifes. This is by far the most tragic experience.