FIRSTLY it may be cynical of me to suspect that the clue is in the company’s name as to why Steven Hyde MD of Mineral Engineering Processes Ltd (MEP) took exception to my letter in the previous week's postbag about the implications of a potential Stonehenge tunnel fire?

The MD of MEP Ltd may wish the work is done so his firm may supply hydro-cyclones to remove most of the pollutants from the ground water during a tunnel's construction.

He also may wish to supply his company's separators to remove the flints from the over four million tonnes of chalk spoil, from a tunnel and ramps requiring 133 thousand lorries to cart it away on local roads. Secondly, I must apologise to Mr Hyde.

I should have named the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy instead of mistakenly referring to the St Gothard tunnel and the wrong combustible being involved in the tunnel fire, in which a lorry which was carrying margarine, not butter, when it self-ignited.

In the 1999 Mont Blanc fire which burnt for over 53 hours, it took five days to cool enough to get into the tunnel.

It then took nearly three years before the tunnel was re-opened. Ten cars and 18 lorries were destroyed.

However, the main thing is of the 50 people in the vehicles at the start of fire only 12 survived. Two fire engines entered the tunnel from the Italian side and their engines stopped due to lack of oxygen.

Fifteen Italian firemen were injured and one died after all being trapped for over two hours in refuges. The MD of MEP Ltd describes the chances of another St Gothard incident as minimal.

I would not describe five self-ignition fires on lorries being carried on rail cars in the channel tunnel over 20 years as minimal.

The damage caused by the worst two fires, 1996 and 2008, involved one bore of the chunnel being closed for six months on both occasions.

In the 1996 fire, the concrete lining was within one inch of collapsing disastrously.

The 2008 fire required 300 fireman to extinguish. If English Heritage, their establishment friends and Mr Hyde get their way it will be the retained fireman from Wilton and Amesbury who will be the first on the scene of an RTA in the tunnel and they are going to most likely to be at risk of injury or death if a vehicle fire develops in the tunnel along with those trapped in their vehicles jammed nose to tail.

I have not said I am against the dualling of the A303.

As a civil engineer who qualified over 40 years ago with experience of working on motorway construction I think it is essential that as much of the A303 is brought up to dual carriageway standard and a viable alternative route that could double as a Salisbury-Wilton-South Newton-Stoford bypass, is built using the money that EH proposes to be wasted on the tunnel so that MEP may be able to supply even more equipment for the construction of much needed roads.

The land alongside the south side of the A303 past Stonehenge is currently occupied by pigs – I am sure they will not mind moving over about 30 yards to accommodate a surface road where the inevitable vehicle fire can be extinguished and where trapped people can be cut out of their vehicles with minimum risk to the local men and women of the emergency services.

Geoff Jensen B.Sc. C.N.A.A. (Civil Engineering)

Salisbury

STEVEN Hyde thinks that a tunnel past Stonehenge will reduce accidents and pollution (Journal, February 5).

Of course it is only the dual carriageway part of the plan that will offer these advantages.

If the dual carriageway is on the surface, accidents there will always be much easier to handle and pollution will be no greater and will dissipate quicker.

The first accident, or even a breakdown, in the proposed tunnel would, inevitably, produce much chaos. When the first accident happens in any such tunnel, I would not want to be in the A303 traffic queue or live anywhere near it.

Tony Munday

Salisbury