i carnt believe its 13yrs since that tragic fire in the tunnel happened with sad loss of lifes 
i know one thing for sure i was lucky enough to be going a different route at the time
but unfortunetly some people wasnt. i know its a hell of a lot safer nowadays it use to get quite nerve racking the speed trucks use to go through it. were was you all that day 
We always went Frejus when doing Italy as there was usually drops to do around Lyon area.
It wasn`t until quite a few years after the Blanc re-opened that i went through it.
I remember my first trip back from Italy thru the Frejus with 25t of vino-collapso onboard + the locals zooming past in the tunnels +and me thinking âyep all those stories i heard about them were trueâ 
Don`t bear thinking about being stuck in 1 of those tunnels in that situation
And the hero biker;
This story is pretty awesome. Itâs also worth noting that the Gold Medal of the FIM (FĂ©dĂ©ration Internationale de Motocyclisme) Motorcycle Merit was awarded posthumously to Pierlucio Tinazzi for his courageous behaviour. Too bad I found this after April 7th.
This is the story of the worldâs bravest biker hero that youâve almost assuredly never heard of.
The Mont Blanc tunnel ( atmb.net/atmb_hp.php?lang=en ) runs for 7-1/4 miles under the highest mountains in Europe, passing under the Alps to connect France and Italyâs highway systems. Opened in 1965, it currently handles about 1.7 million vehicles a year, including cars, trucks, and motorcycles. On an average day it sees 4,778 vehicles, including 3131 cars & motorcycles, 1602 trucks and 44 buses. Itâs the shortest route between northern and south-eastern EuropeâŠ
On March 24th, 1999, a truck loaded with butter and flour caught fire just past the half-way mark, about 3-3/4 miles into the tunnel (750 meters into the âItalianâ section). The blaze reached 1830 degrees Fahrenheit and burned for over two days. Of the 50 people trapped in the tunnel when the blaze started, only 12 survived. All 12 of them were saved by an Italian motorcyclistâŠ
This is the story of Pierlucio Tinazzi.
Pierlucio was a quiet, unassuming guy living a pretty boring life. Loved to garden & to ride. He didnât have a large contingent of friends. After his mother had a stroke and couldnât run her little restaurant where he had worked any more, he had scored a âsecurityâ job at the Italian facility for the Mont Blanc tunnel â basically riding back and forth through the tunnel on his motorcycle to keep traffic flowing, dispatching tow-trucks and providing motorist assistance as needed. For this remote area of northern Italy, this was a pretty good paying job, but Pierlucio had turned down a promotion to work the control booth at the main Italian office because he preferred to ride over sitting in the officeâŠ
Pierlucio may have been like someone you know. Just another guy living his life in relative obscurity, nothing special going on. His wife had just up and left him a few years earlier and he had been in the dumps for a couple years. When the husband of a co-worker at the Italian facility broke his leg motorcycling, he started giving the coworker rides to the hospital after work every day (she didnât have a driverâs license), and the three of them became firm friends, with the husband and him riding together once the leg finished mending. That was pretty much his inner circle of friends. Kinda sadâŠ
Wednesday, the 24th of March, 1999âŠ
At 10:42 AM a Belgium truck (Volvo FH12 cab towing a refrigerated trailer) was passed through the French toll booth. Nothing special, carrying nine tons of margarine and twelve tons of flour. As the driver went into the tunnel, he made his way along. After a couple miles, he realized something was wrong as cars coming in the opposite direction kept flashing their headlights at him; a glance in his mirrors showed white smoke coming out from under his cab. Normally this was no big deal, as there had been 16 other truck fires in the tunnel over the last 35 years, always extinguished on the spot by the drivers. Today wasnât going to be that day.
At 10:53 AM the truck driver pulled over around the mid-point and climbed down in a cloud of dense white smoke. As he reached under his seat for his fire extinguisher (there were also extinguishers on the walls of the tunnel every few hundred feet), flames erupted from under the truck and he jumped back empty-handed. At this point, the smoke turned blackâŠ
At 10:55 AM, the tunnel employees triggered the fire alarm and stopped any further traffic from entering. At this point the tunnel was populated by at least 10 cars/vans and 18 trucks that had entered from the French side. A few vehicles from the Italian side passed the volvo without stopping. Some of the cars from the French side managed to turn around in the narrow 2-lane tunnel, to retreat back to France, but negotiating the road in the dense smoke that had rapidly filled the tunnel made negotiating traffic pretty much impossible. The other trucks didnât have the space to turn around, and reversing out wasnât an option. Most people rolled up their windows and sat tight, expecting the problem to be resolved shortly⊠after all, nothing serious had ever happened here before.
Within minutes, two fire trucks from the French town of Chamonix responded. The fire melted the wiring and plunged the tunnel into darkness; in the smoke and with the abandoned, wrecked vehicles blocking their path, the large fire-trucks were unable to proceed. The fire crews instead abandoned their vehicles and took refuge in two of the emergency fire cubicles (fire-door sealed small rooms set into the walls every 500 meters or so). As they huddled behind the fire doors, they could hear the burning fuel roll down the road surface, causing tires to pop and gas tanks to explode. They were rescued five hours later by a third fire crew that responded and reached them via a ventilation duct; of the the 15 firefighters that had been trapped, 14 were in serious condition and one (their commanding officer) died in the hospital.
Pierlucio had cleared the tunnel to the French side about 10 minutes earlier, had been taking a break, and was getting ready to make a run back through when the fire alarms went off. He had a two-way comm system in his helmet that kept him in contact with the Italian tunnel office. As soon as the word came, he grabbed breathing equipment and drove his BMW K75 back into the tunnel. As he came across people trying to get out, he stopped and told them to drop to their knees, stick against the wall (where the fresh air ducts fed up) and keep moving, stopping only to breath at the ducts. He rode on into the hell that was the tunnel fire, through the smoke.
Most of the truckers close to the fire suffocated or were poisoned by the gases within minutes. Pierlucio peered among the dead and found the occasional surviver. Heâd put them on the back of the bike and slalom back out the French side as fast as possible, bringing out victim after victim, then going back for the next one. On Pierlucioâs fifth trip into the tunnel, he came across Maurice Lebras, a French truck driver who was unconscious but still alive. Too big and unwieldy to get onto the back of the bike unconscious, Pierlucio refused to abandon him. Instead he wrestled Maurice into fire niche 20 and closed the door.
The original fire doors were rated to survive for two hours. Some had been upgraded in the 34 years since the tunnel was built to survive for four hours, but niche 20 wasnât one of them. Not that it mattered, the fire would burn for over fifty hours and it would be over five days before the tunnel cooled sufficiently for anyone to go back in. Pierlucioâs BMW melted right into the pavement a few yards from niche 20.
This fire raged out of control for over two days. The fire was so hot that the rock that forms the interior of the mountain was permanently changed in chemical form. To say it was hellish would be a gross understatement.
27 people died in their vehicles. 10 died trying to escape on foot. Of the initial 50 people trapped by the fire, only 1 dozen survived. Every one of the dozen said exactly the same thing: âThat guy on the motorcycle saved my life.â
It took two years to repair the damages fully and upgrade the tunnelâs facilities. It reopened to car traffic on the 9th of March, 2002. These days the tunnel employs a permanent staff of 65 firefighters (about 20 are on duty at any instant).
So, this Friday, the 7th anniversary of Pierlucio Tinazziâs incredible heroism and tragic death, all bikers around the world are asked to carry a flower in remembrance if they ride that day⊠To remember the bravest biker hero you probably have never heard of before.
Fairly Humbling is this story, to a biker and a lorry driver 
I had the same idea as someone else 
heading down the mont blanc.
Top man ! Only the good die young ! Rip top man
Anyone know if âŹ498.40 sounds correct for a 3 axle euro 3 return cost ?
FlyByNight:
That sounds correct â tunnelmb.net/v3.0/gb/tarifgb.asp
Cheers ,any ideas on parking behind the total garage nr chamonix ,ive parked there overnight twice before but empty ,I wouldnât mind going into town from there ,iirc thereâs a shower in the garage ? Thanks .
Mont Blanc is closed Monday nights from 2200-0600 Tuesday. Has been shut every week for a couple of months now.
Would sound about right. We got stung over âŹ400 few years ago towing a small yacht on the back of a jeep. They charge on height of the trailer/load aswell
Last time in my motorhome it was âŹ44 .
Closure Thursday 2300-0400