An incident was reported on Thursday, 19^th June after a mobile crane caught fire on the westbound carriageway inside Conwy Tunnel. The fire was declared a major incident by emergency services. Ten fire engines and four specialist appliances were called to the scene.

The NMWTRA Control Room team was alerted shortly before 14:00 on Thursday to a stationary vehicle in the tunnel and the team were able to respond immediately. By following their specific response procedures for fires in road tunnels, they closed the tunnel in both directions, activated the ventilation system, increased lighting, and set the PA system to advise the public of an incident, whilst also liaising with the emergency services. Three North Wales Fire and Rescue Service officers were deployed to the control room where they shared NMWTRA’s emergency plan.

The NMWTRA communications team ensured the public were kept informed throughout the incident.

NMWTRA’s Operations Manager, said: “This is the first time the team have dealt with this type of incident in real-time and the response was outstanding. Operators remained calm and professional and within two minutes of receiving the alert all the incident procedures were in place and the team were liaising with emergency services.

The team receive training and work hard to make sure they are ready for an incident like this, and they reacted exactly as expected.”

Our Traffic Officers were on the ground working in hot temperatures for long periods, providing essential cordons, managing traffic, and allowing the emergency services to undertake their work. The hard work and dedication of all those involved was exceptional.”

Along with the tunnel fire, the control room had to deal with the day-to-day activity across the network. Therefore, they split into two teams, one to manage calls coming in, and one monitoring the tunnel.

Traffic Officers were in attendance on the eastbound carriageway to assist North Wales police to evacuate the tunnel and support emergency service activity by managing the flow of traffic at J15 and J19.

North Wales Fire and Rescue were able to extinguish the fire and dampen down the interior of the tunnel before handing back to NMWTRA for safety assessments.

NMWTRA’s structures, asset, and compliance team carried out an initial inspection to confirm that the tunnel was safe to access. NMWTRA’s traffic management contractor was mobilised at the earliest opportunity and the tunnel re-opened with contraflow through the eastbound bore just over ten hours after the incident occurred.

NMWTRA’s Tunnels Operations Manager, said: “Setting up a contraflow requires a lot of effort from the team. We put out a call to staff to assist and the response was phenomenal.

Once the contraflow was in place the team were able to conduct detailed inspections to determine the extent of any damage. The priority then was to return affected tunnel systems to an operational state as quickly as possible to allow the tunnel to fully re-open minimising further disruption for the public.”

The blaze was so hot it melted several assets causing considerable damage to the tunnel operating systems.

Significant works were undertaken by the NMWTRA tunnels team to repair, replace and restore the tunnel systems, including the ventilation, comms PA, incident detection, telephone systems, fire extinguishers and lighting to the point where it could be reopened safely to 2 way traffic, this also included resurfacing of the affected carriageway.

The tunnel reopened eastbound in the early hours of Friday morning, with the contraflow system, and the teams worked long hours to ensure the tunnel could fully reopen in both directions by 06:00 on Sunday, 22^nd June. However, the works are not finished, and the tunnel has had and will have a number of ongoing night closures to continue the repairs to the tunnel systems.

NMWTRA’s Senior Management team commented: “All the staff involved in the incident response, recovery and the ongoing repairs following the Conwy Tunnel fire were exceptional. From start to finish, their quick thinking, professionalism, collaboration, and commitment to delivering a high-quality response was outstanding.

It was great to see everyone come together, stay focused, and push through obstacles to deliver the best possible outcome. Challenges like these show the strength and resilience of our team.  Whilst the recovery works are still ongoing the effective response has been recognised across all those affected by the incident.