Mont Blanc tunnel (French side)

Anniversaries and memorials are often marked in France, a country that takes its history seriously.

On this day in 1999, a fire broke out in the Mont Blanc tunnel, killing 39.

The Mont Blanc tunnel links Chamonix, France, to Courmayeur, Italy, a distance of more than 11 kilometers (more than 7 miles). When it opened in 1965, it was the longest road tunnel in the world.

Since 1965, the Mont Blanc tunnel has been used by truckers. As the volume of exchanges between France and Italy (and beyond) has grown, so has the number of trucks that use the Mont Blanc tunnel.

On 24 March 1999, a truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire deep in the tunnel. Causation remains disputed or unsettled, but the fire may have been started by a discarded cigarette, sucked into an air filter. The fire grew and spewed great quantities of toxic fumes. Despite the intervention of firefighters, the fire wasn’t completely extinguished for more than two days.

After the fire, the Mont Blanc tunnel remained closed for three years, during reconstruction and renovation work. The tunnel operator today takes pains to emphasize measures taken to improve tunnel safety.

Traffic volume remains a contentious point with residents on both sides of the tunnel. Tunnel use by especially polluting vehicles has been curbed, but realistic alternatives to truck traffic, especially  road/rail multimodal combinations, have been a long time coming and are still off in the future.

The legal and managerial question that the Mont Blanc tunnel disaster leaves with me: how much initiative should tunnel managers show to ensure the safety of tunnel users? My question is one of effort, not money (because the Mont Blanc tunnel generates revenues through tolls). Are managers obligated to actively keep abreast of developments in tunnel safety –which certainly evolved since 1965– and make use of innovations? If so, does their obligation know any limit?