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Cover of Fire Incident and Fire Safety Operational Data for Major Australian Road Tunnels
Fire Incident and Fire Safety Operational Data for Major Australian Road Tunnels
  • Publication no: AP-T341-19
  • ISBN: 978-1-925671-92-6
  • Published: 19 March 2019

This report sets out the process though which fire incident and fire safety operational information was collected for eleven major road tunnels in Australia. This tunnel data set are the major tunnels in Australia as defined by physical characteristics (i.e. unidirectional or length greater than 1km), their high traffic volume and urban location as well as their being monitored and controlled through a dedicated control centre that is continuously staffed. The result of this work is an extensive and high quality data set of 78 fire incidents. The period covered by the study is from the opening date of each of the tunnels, the Sydney Harbour Tunnel being the first opened in August 1992, up to and including June 2016.

  • Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Tunnel Dataset
    • 2.1 Fire Safety Measures in the Tunnel Data Set
    • 2.2 Fixed Fire Fighting (Deluge) Systems
  • 3. Data Collection
  • 4. Results
    • 4.1 Frequency of Fire Incidents
    • 4.2 Fire Size
    • 4.3 Means of Detection
    • 4.4 Means of Extinguishing Fires
    • 4.4 Means of Extinguishing Fires
    • 4.5 Deluge Suppression System
    • 4.6 Impact on Tunnel Operations
    • 4.7 Evacuation
  • 5. Discussion and Conclusions
  • References
  • Appendix A Fire Incident Questionnaire
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