Negligence blamed for tunnel inferno

A converted theatre in the French Alps yesterday witnessed the beginning of a sprawling courtroom drama which will apportion blame for the 39 deaths in the Mont Blanc tunnel fire in March 1999.

Sixteen defendants, ranging from a Belgian truck driver, to the Volvo truck company and the French and Italian tunnel operating companies, are accused of "manslaughter through clumsiness, imprudence, carelessness or negligence".

More than 200 civil litigants, mostly relatives of victims from nine countries, 60 lawyers and 100 witnesses - including a former French Prime Minister - are expected at the trial over the next three months.

No local courtroom could accommodate so many people, so the trial has been switched to a converted municipal theatre in the town of Belleville.

The president of the three judges hearing the trial, Renaud Le Breton de Vannoise, said he would make "no concessions in searching for the truth".

On March 24, 1999, a Volvo refrigerated truck, registered in Belgium, caught fire in the middle of the 12km tunnel under western Europe's highest mountain. The blaze spread to the flour and margarine loaded on the truck, then to 35 other trapped vehicles.

Powerful fans, pumping in air from the Italian end, turned the tunnel into a blast furnace, with temperatures reaching over 1000C.

The tunnel's lining and roadway melted, as did the trapped cars and trucks. Pieces of bone were the only traces of most of the victims.

The prosecution, and lawyers for the victims, said yesterday that they would argue that all the deaths might easily have been avoided. A relatively minor incident was turned into a catastrophe by a chain of errors and by the imprudence and incompetence of the separate, state-owned French and Italian tunnel-operating companies.

The three tunnel companies and seven of their senior officials are accused of putting profits before safety and, in some cases, making crucial errors on the day of the fire.

Volvo Trucks is accused of failing to correct a design fault in its trucks.

The mayor of the nearby town of Chamonix, Michel Charlet, 59, is accused of failing to properly equip and train his fire brigade. There had been no fire drill in the tunnel for 26 years before the disaster.

The Belgian truck driver, Gilbert Degrave, 62, is accused of failing to park his truck in one of the tunnel's emergency lay-bys. After failing to put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher, he took to his heels.

The original cause of the fire is also in dispute. The prosecution alleges it was caused by a lighted cigarette end sucked into the truck's air intake - something which had caused Volvo goods vehicles to catch fire before.

When Degrave stopped his truck, several vehicles drew up behind him, blinded by the smoke and flames.

The prosecution alleges the catastrophe was made much worse by a four-minute delay in responding by tunnel officials at the French end. Vehicles were allowed to enter the tunnel and warning lights within the mountain were not switched on.

Many cars, instead of halting just inside the tunnel, drove right up to the queue behind the blazing truck. Their occupants were rapidly overcome by fumes, then incinerated.

The Italians turned on high-powered fans, blowing air towards the fire and the trapped vehicles. Coordination with the French officials might have warned the Italians that it was crucial to reverse the fans, and extract the smoke and fumes, rather than feed the inferno, the prosecution alleges.

The Italian rescue crew which reached the fire did not know how to operate their emergency truck and themselves had to be saved. The firemen from the French end did not have enough breathing apparatus. One collapsed and died.

Among the many witnesses due to appear is Edouard Balladur, French Prime Minister from 1993 to 1995 and head of the French Mont Blanc tunnel company in the 1960s.

- INDEPENDENT