Mont Blanc Tunnel Trial OpensOn Monday 31st January, 2005 the trial is due to start in Bonneville, France that will investigate charges levelled against various people and companies as a result of the fire in the Mont Blanc tunnel. The fire on 24th March, 1999 killed 39 people.Among those accused of "involuntary homicide by error, imprudence, inattention, negligence or failing to observe safety requirements" is Gilbert Degrave, the Belgian driver of a refrigerated Volvo lorry that is believed to be the ignition point of the blaze. Degrave fiercely denies that he was at fault, claiming that he is being made the scapegoat for the incident. "I am not afraid of going to trial" he said. Degrave is accused of failing to move his vehicle into a siding so the drivers trapped behind him could get past. But he denies this was possible. Volvo Trucks is to face Degrave's allegations that the model of truck in question, the FH12-420hp, had engine design faults known to the company, and that this may have been the cause of the fire. Volvo will contest the claim. Volvo Trucks said to have "worked with [our] experts to determine the cause of the fire, and there are indications that it was an accidental and sudden oil leakage which caused the truck to catch fire. However, the cause of the leakage has not been possible to determine, due to extreme temperatures and the fact that the fire continued for more than 50 hours. What we do know is that the fire did not start as a result of a design or manufacturing error."The lawsuit will take place in a specially arranged room to accomodate more than 200 plaintiffs, 60 lawyers, 160 witnesses, twenty experts, journalists and translators in three languages (English, Italian and German). The investigation involved 70 investigators, led to 55 court-ordered appraisals and 29 international rogatory commissions. The organisation of the trial required the spending of EUR816,650. There are 16 parties to be represented at the trial. In addition to the driver and Volvo, those on trial include the French and Italian companies which operate the tunnel (ATMB and SITMB), safety regulators, the mayor of Chamonix or a senior official from the French public works ministry. The case, which is expected to last three months, will determine what mistakes and defects occurred in the chain of events that unfolded in the tunnel, during one of Europe's worst road disasters. But six years on, nobody is certain how the fire started. The technical report into the fire established an almost incredible series of oversights and blunders. The nearest smoke detector was out of order and the radio frequencies used inside the tunnel were different from those used by French emergency services. It was also shown that the Italian authorities mistakenly pumped fresh air into the fire zone, unwittingly increasing its intensity instead of extracting the smoke. The court will narrowly examine the operating conditions of the tunnel, its management and the management during the disaster. The staff on duty when the fire erupted and the managers of ATMB and SITMB will have to explain why so little safety drills were organised, the lack of safety equipment, the absence of standardisation between the French and Italian sides or the misuse of ventilation systems.However, arguments remain over the spark that set off the chain of events, whether it was a cigarette stub, a fault in the Volvo engine, or due to poor maintenance and faulty management. More than 50 tests have been carried out by specialists in Italy as well as by the British company Atkins on behalf of the French tunnel operator ATMB. The studies commissioned by the Italians exonerate the Italian authorities, and those commissioned by the French exonerate the French.Families claim the tragedy was avoidable. In 2001, the financial squad of the Lyon police showed that ATMB preferred money to safety. Before the fire, the toll tunnel was a cash cow and more trucks than the tunnel could handle were allowed to drive through it. It is believed safety distances between two trucks were not respected to allow as many heavy vehicles as possible. ATMB was making a 91.4% gross margin while the budget dedicated to safety was infinitesimal.The catastrophe led to a complete rewriting of tunnel security rules across the European Union. The tunnel was closed for three years after the blaze and underwent a major renovation, with computerised detection equipment, extra security bays and a parallel escape shaft. Coordination between the French and Italian sides, which was strongly criticised in the technical report, has been improved. EUR380 million has been spent to redo the tunnel.In March 1999, a fire broke out on a truck transporting flour and margarine as it was moving through the 11.6 km tunnel through the Alps linking France and Italy. The fire quickly spread to the traffic backed up behind, engulfing 24 goods vehicles, nine cars and a motorcycle in an inferno that reached temperatures of 1,000°C. Most of the dead suffocated in the poisonous smoke, dying asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. The violence of the blaze was such that nothing but bones of most of the victims was found. The power and duration of the fire fissured the tunnel vault. The roadway partially melted and at some places, the rock was left bare. It took two days to extinguish the fire. Five minutes after the fire erupted, a thick smoke prevented from seeing beyond two metres.Opened in 1965, the Mont Blanc tunnel had seen a vast increase in heavy goods traffic in the years before the disaster. Today some 925 trucks pass through the tunnel on average every day, down from 2,120 per day before the fire. The Mont Blanc disaster was followed by two more tunnel fires, one in Austria's Tauern tunnel in May 1999 with 12 dead and the other in the Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland in October 2001 with 11 dead, leading to stricter EU norms. The SITMB company, the Italian operator, last week paid EUR13.5 million into an account for the families of the 39 people killed. The money was paid into a French escrow account where it would stay until 80% of the 238 family members of those killed agreed to accept it as a settlement. SITMB insisted "this is not an acknowledgement of liability." Visit www.atmb.net and www.tunnelmb.com 05/05.