Application
The Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy experienced a widely publicized fire disaster in March 1999, when a truck travelling through the 12.7 km long tunnel burst into flames 6 km into the structure. The resulting fire burned for 52 hours and ended 41 lives. Damage to the tunnel was so severe that it took almost three years to complete the renovation and modernisation of the entire tunnel infrastructure. For the consortium responsible for re-building the tunnel, compromise was not an option: they had to employ the most modern, effective and reliable fire detection technology available to protect the tunnel. They chose Lios OTS technology.

System configuration:

• 8 OTS-100 Controllers linked via gateways and ODBC-Server.
• Fully redundant layout.
• 384 alarm and event zones.
• Fire localisation precision 6 m.
• Almost 14 km of sensor cable, type HDPE 8 mm.
• Centralized visualisation in the French and Italian control rooms.
• Ventilation, traffic signal and barrier are controlled by the OTS System directly.

Commissioned
End of 2001

Miscellaneous
In case of fire the OTS System quickly provides precise information about the location of the fire and activates procedures in the ventilation system to slow down the natural tunnel wind at the point of the fire and extract smoke efficiently.