2008 Channel Tunnel fire (original) (raw)

On 11 September 2008, a France-bound Eurotunnel Shuttle train carrying heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and their drivers caught fire while travelling through the Channel Tunnel. The fire lasted for sixteen hours and reached temperatures of up to 1,000 °C (1,830 °F). The fire was the third to force the tunnel's closure since its opening in 1994, the first being the 1996 Channel Tunnel fire, the second an August 2006 fire that broke out on a truck aboard a HGV Shuttle, shutting the tunnel down for several hours.