Firefighters managed to extinguish a fire that started along the Channel Tunnel in England. After all the hard work, the firemen were able to put it out on Friday, nearly 20 hours after the explosion had caught a freight train. According to Reuters, the tunnel operator stated that the passenger services would resume later on Friday.

The Eurotunnel who owns and manages the rail link undersea stated that technicians were already working to fix the damage caused by the blaze. The English Channel’s two main tunnels connect Britain with France and all the traffic was stopped creating an ambuscade which could last for several hours.

Jacques Gounon, the Eurotunnel’s CEO told the French radio that they needed “six to eight hours to make sure that everything is safe.” He added that if everything was alright and no problem would appear, the traffic will be released by the end of the day. The adjoining tunnel suffered no damage during the blaze and this should be easy to reopen.

No one was injured or killed during the fire, but the burning inferno damaged and destroyed a French-bound train shuttle which was carrying lorries. Yet, the officials still don’t know how big the damage of the freight tunnel was because the temperatures reached 1,000 Celsius and if there were a problem it could take several weeks to fix it.

Statistics show us that nearly 40,000 people use the tunnel every day to travel between Britain and continental Europe. A spokesman for the Eurostar said that they will be back in business probably on Saturday but many passengers were left waiting on one side or the other, expecting the airlines to give extra flights. They also chose to book ferry boats to travel from Britain to France and otherwise.

Officials believe that the fire started on a lorry loaded on the usual freight service and they are still investigating the causes that had led to the blaze. Gunon said that the fire had started 40 km into the 51 km tunnel and that it started deliberately. Some truck drivers caught inside the sealed compartment on the shuttle broke the windows to escape the fire, even if they should have waited for the ventilation systems to remove the toxic smokes.

The truck drivers said that they didn’t know about this and that they felt very scared because the door of the carriage was blocked and they couldn’t get out. They added that they broke the window with a hammer and saw a truck on fire and “a series of explosion.”

“There were about 20. Everything was exploding around us -- tires, fuel tanks and then there was this smoke which stopped us seeing and breathing properly," he added. Six people were quickly transported to the hospital because they had inhaled the fumes. Eight other persons who were on the bridge suffered cuts and bruises, but nothing serious.

Gunon told the French radio that Eurotunnel isn’t expecting financial problems after the blaze and that it won’t bring significant consequences for the future of the company."