CHAMONIX, France -- Exhausted firefighters battled searing heat and poisonous smoke Friday in a tunnel under Western Europe's highest peak, searching through charred semitrailer trucks for victims of a blaze that killed at least 30 people.
The 7-mile tunnel under Mont Blanc turned into an inferno two days ago, when the blaze broke out in a truck carrying flour and margarine.Firefighters sprayed the area with coolant today, trying to bring down temperatures that reached 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit at one point in the tunnel, said Lt. Stephane Marcelin of the Chamonix fire department.
Marie-Claude Bazile, a spokeswoman for the regional government of Haute-Savoie region on the French end of the tunnel, said 30 people were confirmed killed, with nine bodies identified.
"There could be more, unfortunately," Bazile told The Associated Press by telephone from Annecy.
It was the first fatal fire in the tunnel, which was the longest in the world when President Charles de Gaulle opened it in 1965. The Alpine tunnel is used daily by some 4,000 trucks.
Speaking from his hospital bed, Chamonix fire chief Christian Comte said he'd spent five hours in the tunnel Wednesday, looking for his men.
"The smoke was very dense and the temperatures were soaring, but I knew that I had to go help them," he said from the Sallanches Hospital, where he was recovering from smoke inhalation.
Speaking to the AP in Paris by telephone, Comte said he'd worked his way along the wall of the tunnel until he came to a group of six firefighters -- all lying on the ground with their jackets over their heads, motionless.
"I thought they were all dead," he said. He helped them all leave, but one later died.
A fresh contingent of 52 firefighters and 17 vehicles began battling the blaze early today, said Haute-Savoie's governor Pierre Breuil. The French, Swiss and Italian firefighters were working from the Italian end of the tunnel because the wind was blowing fumes and smoke toward the French side.