Channel Tunnel fire smolders, manager eyes restart

PARIS (Reuters) - A fire inside the undersea Channel Tunnel that broke out on Thursday and has halted rail traffic between Britain and continental Europe is close to being extinguished, an official in northern France said on Friday.

The freight train blaze turned one of the two main tunnel shafts into a smoking inferno. No one was killed, but six people needed hospital treatment after inhaling fumes.

"The fire has been brought under control. We are in a phase of cooling down residual fires around the main fire," a local government official in Calais said, adding that the main fire had been extinguished.

Eurotunnel, which manages the tunnel, had initially said no trains would run through it on Friday, but the company's chief executive said he thought services might restart before the end of the day.

"I think, without making any commitment, that it will be possible to resume the service at half-capacity today," Eurotunnel's Jacques Gounon told RTL radio.

He said Eurostar passenger trains, which link London to Paris and Brussels, and the freight shuttle service should be able to resume traveling soon, but that company staff had not yet been able to inspect the tunnel shafts.

Officials said they believed the fire had started on a lorry loaded aboard a freight shuttle service, then spread.

When the flames were detected, the French-bound train was brought to a halt some 11 km (7 miles) short of the French end of the tunnel. The 32 people aboard the shuttle were evacuated through a service tunnel.

Gounon said some truck drivers who were traveling in a sealed compartment broke windows to escape, confirming an eyewitness account in the French press.  Continued...