The Gotthard tunnel turned into the death trap many drivers using the narrow, dimly lit 17km road through the Swiss-Italian Alps have always feared.
A truck transporting used tyres and another truck collided, turning a 300m stretch of the world's second longest road tunnel into an inferno which killed at least 10 people.
Like the tall crosses dotted across Europe's Alps which show where people have died in mountain accidents, so the tunnels burrowed through them have come to be associated with death.
In 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel turned into a fireball, killing 39 people after a lorry caught fire in a single-tube tunnel between France and Italy.
In the same year, a blaze in the Tauern motorway tunnel under the Alps in central Austria killed 12.
Even before news of the deadly accident emerged, interest groups had either campaigned for a reduction in traffic or for the construction of a second tube to the tunnel which would allow traffic lanes to be separated.
"This was an accident that was waiting to happen. The Gotthard tunnel has just one lane in each direction in a single corridor," said Markus Gisler.
Gisler is a member of the local parliament of the canton or state of Uri and a prominent campaigner for a second Gotthard tunnel. The Gotthard's north entrance is in Uri.
Gotthard is one of the heaviest north-south transport routes in Europe, a crossroads for goods linking much of Germany and the rest of northern Europe to Italy and the Mediterranean.
"Any accident is one too many and this fire in the Saint Gotthard tunnel is all the more poignant because of its echoes of the Mont Blanc tunnel fire in 1999," said David Green, president of the IRU International Road Transport Union.
Alps tunnels reduced to two
He said the number of major road transit routes across the Alps had been reduced to two - the Brenner in Austria and the Frejus in France.
"Movement of people and goods to and from Italy will be greatly complicated to the detriment of the European economy," Green said.
Uelrich Mueller of the Swiss Association for Transport and Environment, said tunnel traffic had doubled in the past decade.
"The risk in the Gotthard tunnel is very high because the number of lorries has risen in the last few years," he said.
The government has so far resisted a second tunnel citing environmental and financial concerns.
Swiss President and Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger said a second pipe would make the Gotthard more safe, but so would a ban on truck traffic through the tunnel.
He said he had recently discussed with his Italian counterpart a proposal to demand a space of at least 150 metres (yards) between two trucks inside the tunnel and to make it mandatory for trucks to carry fire extinguishers.
Leuenberger said Gotthard's safety escape tunnel had helped to avoid many more deaths.
"The security arrangements are as good as they can be, with an escape tunnel...But the basic structure of a single corridor, one lane tunnel is very dangerous. It is a repeat of Mont Blanc," said Gisler.
Mueller of the transport association, which campaigns for the increased use of rail for the transportation of goods, agreed an accident had been waiting like a time bomb.
"We have to say that this was bound to happen. After Mont Blanc and Tauern it was just a matter of time for it to happen in Switzerland," he said.
"Looking at what happened with Mont Blanc, it could take years for the tunnel to be re-opened," he added.
© Reuters
