Special report: Effective Firefighting Operations in Road Tunnels
Published: 29 March, 2010
The main purpose of this study is to develop operational procedures for fire brigades in road tunnels. Although much progress has been achieved in various fields of fire safety in tunnels, very little attention has been paid specifically to firefighting in tunnels.
This study, by Hak Kuen Kim, Anders Lönnermark and Haukur Ingason, is focused on obtaining more information concerning how effectively the fire brigade can fight road tunnel fires and what limitations and threats fire brigades may be faced with. This knowledge can help parties involved in tunnel safety to understand safety issues and enhance the level of fire safety in road tunnels.
The report is divided into three main parts. The first part consists of a review of relevant studies and experiments concerning various key parameters for fire safety and emergency procedures. The history of road tunnel fires is then summarised and analyzed. Among all road tunnel fires, three catastrophic tunnel fires are highlighted, focusing on the activities of fire brigades and the operation of technical fire safety facilities.
In the second part specific firefighting operations are developed. This has been based on previous experience and new findings from experiments performed in the study. In the last part, information is given on how the proposed firefighting operations can be applied to the management of fire safety for road tunnels.
Two proposals are developed and presented: fire scenarios for firefighting strategies and tunnel classification models for risk management for fire brigades.
