Austrian tunnel likely closed following fire

ERIC FREY

VIENNA, Austria -- The four-mile long Tauern tunnel near Salzburg in Austria, a key road link between Germany and Italy, is expected to be closed for several months following a collision and fire that killed at least one person and injured 49.

Freight haulers and tourists traveling between northern and southern Europe face a summer of disruption following the fire Saturday, which put a second Alpine road tunnel out of action. The accident came two months after a fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy killed 42 people and forced the closure of the tunnel for at least a year. The seven-mile Mont Blanc tunnel carried half of all road freight between the two countries. The Tauern tunnel closure will add to traffic on the Brenner route through the Tyrol and other Alpine passes and will exacerbate congestion during summer weekends. The two incidents have highlighted the vulnerability of narrow, single-tube road tunnels. On Sunday Austrian Chancellor Viktor Klima urged the construction of a second tube to the Tauern tunnel. The fires also have exposed the crude nature of safety precautions taken in the increasingly busy tunnels, where trucks carrying dangerous loads are separated by no more than a white line. A preliminary official French report into the Mont Blanc fire found Italian controllers pumped air into the tunnel, fanning the flames, instead of extracting the smoke. Coordination between the French and Italian sides of the tunnel was also poor. The Mont Blanc fire has persuaded the French to drop objections to a new rail tunnel under the Alps linking Lyons and Turin, but this wouldn't be ready before 2015. Switzerland also is working on two more rail tunnels to reduce the volumes of heavy trucks passing through environmentally sensitive Alpine valleys.

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