The Hanekleiv tunnel is a road tunnel in Vestfold

Vestfold

is a county in Norway, bordering Buskerud and Telemark. The county administration is in Tønsberg.Vestfold is located west of the Oslofjord, as the name indicates. It includes many smaller, but well-known towns in Norway, such as Larvik, Sandefjord, Tønsberg and Horten. The river Numedalslågen runs...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, one of seven along the European route E18

European route E18

European route E18 runs from Craigavon in the United Kingdom to Saint Petersburg in Russia, passing through Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is about 1,890 km in length.-United Kingdom:...

 between Sande

Sande, Vestfold

Sande is a municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of "Sande i Vestfold". The municipality of Sande was established on 1 January 1838 ....

 and Holmestrand

Holmestrand

is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Holmestrad. The city was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . The neighboring rural municipality of Botne was merged into the municipality of Holmestrand on 1 January...

. The tunnel became the centre of controversy on 25 December 2006 when part of the roof collapsed, and investigations revealed that several tunnels on the E18 through Vestfold were insufficiently secured. The tunnel was fully reopened on August 30, 2007.

Technical details

The tunnel is 1,765 metres long and has two tubes, one for each direction of travel and each accommodating two lanes of highway. The tunnels were opened for traffic on 30 October 2001. The rock which the tunnel is built through is frequently unstable. To compensate for this, the tunnel roof and walls were reinforced at places with bolts and concrete injections, however the tunnel was not equipped with concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

 walls throughout the length of the tunnel.

The E18 tunnels in Vestfold had about 17,000 vehicles pass through them each day.

December 25, 2006 incident

Late on Christmas Day, about 200 cubic metres of rock fell from the ceiling of the southbound tunnel, onto the highway below. No cars were in the tunnel at the time, and there were no injuries. Debris continued to fall in the tunnel for up to three hours after the initial collapse. The debris covered a 25 meter long stretch of road, and at places the pile was almost as high as the tunnel.

The police department of Southern Buskerud was tasked with investigating the avalanche. Neighbors close to the tunnel reported having noticed slight tremors and rumbles. Worries about the tunnel's safety had surfaced already during construction in 1997, when construction on the tunnel was halted so that additional security measures could be implemented.

May 28, 2007 incident

During repair work on 28 May 2007, two workers who were repairing and securing the tunnel sustained light injuries in a second incident. An unknown amount of concrete from the original securing of the tunnel fell over the workers. Statens Vegvesen rejects that this was a new collapse of the tunnel, declaring the episode to be a work accident

Work accident

A work accident is a "discrete occurrence in the course of work, which leads to physical or mental harm"...

.

Fallout

The investigation uncovered serious shortcomings in the security of tunnels throughout Vestfold, not only the Hanekleiv Tunnel. Several other tunnels near the Hanekleiv tunnel were deemed to be safety risks, and had to be closed for further investigations and securing. The Progress Party

Progress Party (Norway)

The Progress Party is a political party in Norway which identifies as conservative liberal and libertarian. The media has described it as conservative and right-wing populist...

 demanded that the director of the Norwegian Directorate of Public Roads, Olav Søfteland

Olav Søfteland

Olav Søfteland is a Norwegian civil servant.Hailing from Søfteland in Os, he is a siv.ing. from the Norwegian Institute of Technology by education. In 1960 he was hired in the Norwegian Directorate of Public Roads, and was eventually promoted to director in 1992...

, resign as a result.

The cost of adequate reinforcement of the Vestfold E18 tunnels was estimated to be 200 million Norwegian krone

Norwegian krone

The krone is the currency of Norway and its dependent territories. The plural form is kroner . It is subdivided into 100 øre. The ISO 4217 code is NOK, although the common local abbreviation is kr. The name translates into English as "crown"...

r, or some 33.2 million US dollars.

The closure of the E18 highway for tunnel repairs during the summer of 2007 lead to major traffic jams. Proposals to mitigate the road troubles included more trains and cutting the fares by 50% on the Vestfoldbanen

Vestfoldbanen

The Vestfold Line is a Norwegian railway line which runs from Drammen, through a number of towns in Vestfold and ending in the town of Skien in Telemark. At Skien, the line continues as the Bratsberg Line to Notodden...

railway.