Channel Tunnel fire put out, traffic still halted

A fire in the Channel Tunnel was put out yesterday, almost 20 hours after it took hold on a freight train, and the tunnel operator said passenger services between Britain and France should resume soon.

An official said there were indications the fire had started by accident but it was too early to identify the exact cause.

Eurotunnel, which manages the undersea rail link, said its technicians needed six to eight hours to assess the safety of the two main tunnels that connect the two countries.

"Unless there are unexpected surprises, we are looking at a resumption of service by the end of the day," Eurotunnel's CEO Jacques Gounon told French radio.

However, Eurostar, which operates the cross-Channel trains, told passengers it did not expect to be back in business yesterday. Anyone holding tickets for weekend trains should consult its www.eurostar.com website, it said.

No one was killed in the fire, which turned one of the two tunnel shafts into an inferno, with temperatures reaching 1,000ºC.

This section of track might take weeks to repair, but Mr Gounon said the adjoining tunnel "had not suffered any damage".

About 40,000 people a day use the tunnel to travel between Britain and continental Europe and thousands of passengers were left stranded by the incident.

"I was expecting them to give us a solution, to get a train or a plane... but it's our problem, they said," said Isadora Cruciol, an assistant manager at a hotel in England, who turned up at Paris's Gare du Nord station hoping for information.

Magistrates have opened an investigation into the fire, which officials think began on a lorry loaded on the shuttle.

Prosecutor from Boulogne-sur-Mer, Gerald Lesigne, told a news conference that initial findings pointed to an accident.

"We are looking at facts which point to an accident... at this stage no indication on the origin of the start of the fire is possible," Mr Lesigne said.

Eurotunnel's Gounon had said that the blaze took hold some 40 kilometres into the 51-kilometre tunnel, towards the French end.

He said some truck drivers who had been travelling in a sealed compartment on the shuttle smashed windows to escape. They should have waited until ventilation systems had removed toxic smoke before looking to reach the service tunnel, he added. Six people were taken to hospital after inhaling the fumes and eight others suffered cuts and bruises.

Truck drivers caught up in the blaze said they had felt trapped in the stranded train.

"The door of our carriage was locked. It was impossible to open it. We saved ourselves by breaking a window with a hammer," Belgian truck driver Patrick Lejein told daily Le Parisien.

"Everything was exploding around us - tyres, fuel tanks and then there was this smoke which stopped us seeing and breathing properly," he added.

Any prolonged disruption to services would be a blow for Eurotunnel, which posted its first profit only last year, but Mr Gounon said the company was insured and he did not expect any financial problems as a result of the blaze. Eurotunnel shares were down 1.2 per cent at €8.89 at 1400 GMT.

Opened in 1994, the Channel Tunnel is the longest undersea subway in the world. There have been two previous blazes in the tunnel, both involving lorries being transported on trains, with a 1996 fire halting freight traffic for seven months.