I have been reading the following in the newspapers:

THE toll from yesterday’s horrific Burnley Tunnel crash and inferno could rise above the three people confirmed dead, authorities have warned.

Police are seeking surveillance footage of the accident, which began in the tunnel just before 10am. They said it was not yet known how many people had been travelling in the cars destroyed in the carnage.

The tunnel could remain closed until Monday as investigators examine the scene and engineers assess it for structural damage, police said.

Explosions rocked the tunnel, motorists told of a huge wall of flames and temperatures soared above 1000 degrees. Police Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby said some of the crash vehicles had turned into “balls of molten metal”. Investigators had still not identified the make of some of the cars.

In particular, I am driven to comment on CityLink’s response to the accident:

A motorist trapped in the tunnel, barrister Anthony Southall, QC, said the rescue effort was inadequate for those first frightening minutes when motorists were trying to walk out of the 3.4-kilometre tunnel unaided.

“There were no CityLink staff to direct us. In fact, there was a disabled lady in the car behind us and she needed some assistance.”

So what was CityLink doing?

CityLink spokeswoman Jean Ker Walsh said the initial accident had occurred very quickly, before a CityLink recovery vehicle could respond.

“We do know that immediately our lane closure system was activated. Regrettably, before an accident response team could get there, the incident occurred.”

“There are very strong practices to shut down a particular lane where necessary … it happened so instantaneously, emergency practices were just starting to occur when the second and third crashes occurred.”

Now, I don’t know if road engineers use the same buzzwords, but in the field of software engineering we make a distinction between ‘verification’ and ‘validation’ as types of testing. Verification testing checks that some process occurred as specified. Seems the “lane closure system” passed this test. Validation checks whether the process had the desired effect. Obviously this is the more difficult type of testing. And we also see that the “lane closure system” did not have the desired effect. So perhaps it would be more helpful to say “hmm, looks like we need better crash response procedures” than to say “well, our crash response procedures operated as designed, whoopeedoo!”.

He urged motorists to put the tragedy into perspective. “The tunnel’s been around a long time,” he said.

This one really gets me. A long time? Puh-leeze… the tunnel was opened in December 2000 - it’s just over 6 years old. CityLink have a contract with the government to operate the tunnel for 30 years [33 years and 6 months, in fact]- so the tunnel has just passed one fifth of its expected operating time. Tunnels that have been around a long time are:

• Kurikoyama tunnel, Japan (constructed 1880)
• Glenbrook railway tunnel, the Blue Mountains (constructed 1891-1892)
• Der Alte Elbtunnel, Hamburg, Germany (constructed 1907-1911).

I’d even give the honour to the San Bernardino Tunnel in Switzerland, constructed 1967. But 6 years?

At least they have some compassion:

CityLink also announced today that tolls would be waived for affected motorists yesterday.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am and is filed under Intellectual, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.