Tunnel fire under English Channel, no injuries
Story By: MSNBC
Source: MSNBC
A fire broke out Thursday on a cargo train shuttling trucks under the English Channel between England and France, suspending traffic in the undersea tunnel, officials said. All aboard the train were evacuated safely.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze after it broke out about 7 miles from the French side, said a spokesman for Eurotunnel, the company that operates the tunnel. The spokesman was not authorized to be publicly named.
The shuttle train was carrying 32 crew and truck drivers when the fire broke out just before 4 p.m., the spokesman said.
France's rail operator SNCF said the fire erupted on a chemical-carrying truck aboard the train, and recommended that travelers postpone their travel plans through the tunnel until Friday.
Traffic on the 30-mile tunnel was suspended five minutes after the fire broke out, the official said. Firefighters were still examining the site Thursday afternoon.
Fires have broken out in the past on the undersea tunnel, which opened for commercial traffic in 1994, but they are rare.
In August 2006, the tunnel was closed for several hours after a fire broke out on a truck loaded onto a freight train. No one was hurt.
A larger fire broke out aboard a train carrying heavy good vehicles through in the tunnel on Nov. 18, 1996. No one was killed but several people were injured and a large stretch of the tunnel was damaged. The fire led to new safety precautions for trains using the tunnel.
