Filling a 6.6 km long tunnel up with smoke. A construction time of less than half an hour ... That’s the challenge the FireWare staging team had to rise to during a major multidisciplinary exercise in the Westerschelde tunnel in Zeeland.
Westerschelde tunnel
The Westerschelde tunnel is a 6.6 km long tunnel which runs underneath the Westerschelde. The tunnel links Terneuzen and Ellewountsdijk and is the Netherlands’ longest tunnel for road traffic. The maximum height is 4.3 meters and the tunnel’s deepest point can be found an impressive 60 meters below the water level!
Exercise objective
The aim of this training exercise was to test the incident response plan for road tunnels. As many operational emergency response team members as possible were given the opportunity to practice the tunnel procedures during the scenario. This included the police, the fire service, ambulance crews, but also the Rijkswaterstaat and the tunnel management company.
Tight schedule
The Westerschelde tunnel provides a very important link. The tunnel was therefore closed off to all traffic during the exercise. The construction time for the staging was minimal. All the smoke machines were positioned on a trailer in order to save time, plus they had already been heated up outside of the tunnel with the use of a large Aggregate. Once the tunnel had been released to us, the staging took less than 20 minutes to set up!
Realistic smoke build up
A large number of ventilators have been installed in the tunnel, which are responsible for moving the smoke outside during a calamity. Hot air and smoke rises. The smoke was vertically injected into the tunnel tube during the staging. We were even able to create the optical illusion of black smoke as a result of smart use of lighting in the tunnel.
A set of 7 cumulus and 7 stratus smoke machines provided a continuous stream of smoke of 9000 m3 per minute. The “boost” setting was activated at several different points during the exercise. This allowed for a total of up to 21.000 m2 of smoke per minute to be produced! The smoke was able to remain intact for a long period of time as we opted for outdoor liquid smoke, which also meant you could actually see the smoke coming out of the tunnel tube at the end of the tunnel.
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