A Brief History
On March 24, 1999, an unlikely cargo became deadly when a truck carrying margarine and flour caught fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel on its way from France to Italy.
Digging Deeper
While fires in tunnels can be a terrifying prospect, the Mont Blanc tunnel was no stranger to fire, having previously experienced 16 truck fires prior to this incident. The driver of the Belgian truck became aware of a problem when oncoming traffic began flashing their headlights to alert him to smoke pouring out of his truck.
Stopping his truck about half-way through the 7.2 mile long tunnel, the driver was unable to douse the flames and ran to the tunnel entrance. Unable to turn around, other trucks were stuck in the tunnel which rapidly filled with smoke.
The fuel in the truck also caught fire, and sadly 39 people died in the tunnel that day. The cause of the fire remains disputed.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Beard, Alan. Handbook of Tunnel Fire Safety. ICE Publishing, 2011.
Patore, Arthur. Dynamite Under the Alps The Challenge of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Coward McCann, Inc, 1963.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by AndrewvdBK of a memorial plaque on the French side of the tunnel, pictured in 2010, remembering those who were killed in the fire, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
