Limited Rail Traffic Resumes After Channel Tunnel Fire

Limited freight traffic resumed through the fire-damaged rail tunnel between England and France on Thursday, but there was no clear indication when passenger service would resume as controversy continued over blame and safety.

Eurotunnel, which operates the debt-ridden 31-mile tunnel under the English Channel, promised that full service would begin again in the next few days; but Eurostar, which runs the high-speed passenger service, said it was not accepting reservations for journeys to be taken before Dec. 1.

As cleanup crews removed railway cars, tracks and equipment destroyed in Monday’s fire, it was clear that damage to the westbound France-to-England tunnel proved more serious than originally reported. Fourteen carriages burned so fiercely that some of them became fused with the tracks. Thirty-one truck drivers and three crew members narrowly escaped being overcome by smoke.

A nearly half-mile-long section of the tunnel, located about 12 miles from the entrance at Calais, France, was damaged so severely that one British firefighter said he could see the chalky channel bedrock at one place between fallen slabs of concrete and twisted structural steel.

Neither the eastbound tunnel nor the untracked service tunnel was damaged, but permission for trains to use the unaffected rail tunnel came Thursday only after an acrimonious 13 1/2-hour meeting of the British-French Safety Commission. The commission gave authority for six freight trains to move in either direction through the tunnel every 90 minutes.

A Eurostar spokesman said a commission meeting Monday will consider restoring at least limited passenger service. Le Shuttle service--which carries passengers and their cars, along with freight trucks--will follow as full service is restored. Eurotunnel officials said it will take three to four weeks for full repairs, forcing travelers to rely on planes, cross-channel ferries and other watercraft in the meantime.

Eurostar, run by a consortium of railroads, had been carrying about 20,000 passengers a day between London and the Continent. British analysts estimated Eurotunnel’s operating losses, largely offset by insurance, will be about $1.7 million a day. Eurotunnel owes $15 billion to bankers, who hold almost half the company.

The company says that emergency procedures worked smoothly in the first serious incident in a tunnel that has carried nearly a million trucks, but not everyone is convinced.

Three investigations are underway. Issues they will consider include whether French security guards saw a truck smoldering before the train entered the tunnel Monday night and why it had not been possible to stop it in time.

Company procedures call for a train on fire to leave the tunnel as rapidly as possible, but the locomotive’s emergency brakes apparently jammed Monday. Smoke filled the tunnel and the lounge car in which the truck drivers were riding, despite exhaust fans designed to blow smoke away.

“We have to get safety right--next time we could be talking about bodies, not close escapes,” said Ken Cameron, leader of the British Fire Brigades’ Union.

Cameron opposed even the limited reopening. “There should now be an urgent public inquiry into the fire, and until such an inquiry can guarantee that safety is adequate, no one should go through the tunnel.”