FACED with ferocious criticism and falling share prices, Eurotunnel, the company which operates the train beneath the English Channel, yesterday ordered its employees to say nothing more about the train fire which wounded eight people in the tunnel on Monday night.
"The company is now involved in a legal case and they have ruled that they are not talking about details any more," Mr Francis Borel, the public relations officer at Eurotunnel headquarters in Calais said. "They have issued legal instructions to the staff that there is to be no comment."
The firm's share price fell another 3.24 per cent on the Paris Bourse yesterday, closing at 7.45 French francs (£0.88).
Contrary to earlier announcements by Eurotunnel, train service did not recommence.
Mr Borel said that only Eurotunnel's general manager, Mr Georges Christian Chazot, and Mr Alain Bertrand, assistant manager for technical issues, were authorised to talk about Monday night's fire - but both men were at a meeting in Calais with the Franco British inter governmental safety committee from yesterday morning until last night.
French and British newspapers have raised a number of disturbing questions about the fire, which caused no loss of life. Numerous witnesses said they saw smoke coming from the lorry which started the fire before it entered the tunnel. "Could this fire have been detected before the departure of the train?" the Paris economic daily yes Echos asked.
As confirmed earlier by Eurotunnel, the company's safety instructions were to extinguish fires in freight cars outside the tunnel. But the electrical system apparently failed after the fire broke out, and firemen were forced to fight the fire inside the tunnel for 14 hours.
It is not clear whether the power cut was caused by a break in the overhead catenary system, or whether the built in security system shut down the electricity.
France Soir newspaper, which published a very critical editorial about the train fire titled "Shameless Lies" on its front page, reported that a lorry carrying "extremely dangerous cargo was being transported by the same train, but fortunately did not catch fire.
Several papers reported that ventilation systems failed to function during the fire.
Critics have also alleged that the open lattice work design of the freight transporters is inherently unsafe, because the wind velocity created by the trains' movement turns the transporters into virtual blowtorches in the event of fire.
When construction on the tunnel started, company officials boasted that its security would be "as good as that in nuclear power plants or oil platforms".
