Paphos People

From the Daily Mail.

"A huge explosion caused a fire to break out in a tunnel running underneath Manchester Airport.

Firefighters are currently on the scene of the blaze, which has forced the closure of both the tunnel and a nearby runway.

Pictures show heavy smoke in the tunnel, on the A538, as firefighters battle the blaze. Eyewitnesses reported hearing a loud bang.

It is unclear at this point how the fire started. Closure was put in place after a van caught fire in the tunnel. The fire has now been extinguished.

The van is now being recovered and firefighters are checking over the tunnel. They are aiming to reopen it soon.

Dale Beardsall was in the tunnel at the time of the fire and had to reverse out when he heard a loud bang and saw thick smoke coming out of the tunnel.

The engineer said: 'I was just in the tunnel, a few cars in. There was a lot of smoke and all the traffic had stopped.

'A couple of guys ran through the tunnel, they said "get everybody to back out".

'The cars behind us made way for a middle lane so cars could get through and get out of the tunnel.

'I managed to back out of the tunnel in my car, but some people in cars in front had to get out of their cars and run out on foot.' "

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4269010/Massive-explosion-tunnel-Manchester-Airport.html

Hopefully that was a genuine accident but with all the warnings recently perhaps not.

"So just a van catching fire? Good play with headlines"

"Let's hope travel chaos is the worst that's happened."

2 comments from DM website

Nothing on Sky apparently or BBC so hopefully nothing sinister

A less sensational report in the telly graph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02 ... r-airport/

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J B

Good.

The explosions apparently, according to the local newspaper (Manchester Evening News) were the tyres on the van popping but obviously more amplified due to the confines of the tunnel:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ ... n-12671513

I have to say I'm very familiar with that tunnel - a lot of my late 20s and early 30s were spent travelling backwards and forwards through it of an evening most weekends in cars with uprated engines alongside a group of 9 lads just so we could hear them roar!

I've always been a bit of a petrol head....

The tunnel is now open again although it seems a number of flights have been delayed. Hope there are no more "happenings" with flights, we're due to fly out of Manchester very soon - off to Malta.

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Busy exploring England's green & pleasant lands since May 2016 after 12yrs in Cyprus.
There appears to be a misapprehension I run a photography business... it's my passion as a hobby.
I sell and buy postage stamps!

to much drama in last posts here

The only drama was being reported in the DM which the OP Passed on...Manchester Airport to a lot of people on this site as it is a major route from Paphos and therefore important to readers, thankfully it was not a drama but in the hightened state of terror threat in Europe and the U.K., you can hardly blame people for being concerned.

the TS brought to us a couple hoax last days ... and both are too distant to Paphos

I would suggest that the Manchester episode was ver relevant considering the amount of uk expats who use the airport.

Not only that, it may well have given birth to ideas for a different tactic by terrorists - major disruption by minimum effort & risk!

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I'll be back!

But as it happened it turned out not to be a big deal.
My wife's nephew is a paramedic and works the Airport area daily.
He tells us it was just (if that is the word!) a "vehicle incident"; the Manchester Area terrorist attack
contingency plans were not activated.
Panic over.
Geoff.

Sounds like they consist of a reactive policy, rather than preventative measures?

Typically British 'Stable door' policy.

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I'll be back!

How can they "prevent" if they have no idea what form it might take?
Geoff.

You could say that though about every place where there's a tunnel or flyover near a major road network or artery. A bomb somewhere on the M25 could bring the whole country to a standstill pretty quickly.

The road in question (Wilmslow Rd A538) at Manchester does go under the runways at one point but not by the terminal buildings so any terrorist attack there would have to be crucially timed for a massive impact.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.35041 ... a=!3m1!1e3

More chance of blowing up Britain's highways and byways or better still railway stations and airports themselves.

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Busy exploring England's green & pleasant lands since May 2016 after 12yrs in Cyprus.
There appears to be a misapprehension I run a photography business... it's my passion as a hobby.
I sell and buy postage stamps!

Whilst terrorism is something we need to be vigilant about, I think we need to get it into perspective.

Latest figures show that since the turn of the century, the annualised average of 5 deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales compares with total accidental deaths just in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

I think you should start counting people who died from heart attack of the Brexit.

and this from someone who posted. So on one hand changing the subject and on the other wanting people to stay on subject????

The thread already heavily infested by off-topic posts ... treat my last post as tongue-in-cheek.
I'm give up to follow any threads like this :(

I was reading the Daily Mail online when I saw the original story titled under Breaking News. The story said "Massive Explosion" in speechmarks, but I had to remove them otherwise the title would have been too long.

My thinking in posting it was to let forum members know in case they hadn't seen it, given that a lot of people travel to and from the UK through Manchester airport.

Since then the story has been updated several times and turned out not to be any kind of terrorist incident.

It never occurred to me when I posted it that some members would react in the way they did.

I was genuinely trying to be helpful, but several posters clearly didn't see it that way. Another forum that no longer exists had a reputation for those kinds of criticisms, but PP always seemed much better than that.

Why can't people just accept it for what it was rather than feel that they have to argue and get the last word every time? If it carries on this way, very soon people will think twice about posting what could be very useful information and that doesn't help any of us.

We all have an opinion and should be encouraged to express it, but to always look for the negative gets a bit wearying after a while.!

I think you may exaggerate the impact of this event FF, it would probably only affect the commuters in & around London.
The "whole country" outside of this relatively small 'circle' would hardly notice IMHO.

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I'll be back!

You forgot that they will close all motorways for security concerns in the beginning;-)

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Busy exploring England's green & pleasant lands since May 2016 after 12yrs in Cyprus.
There appears to be a misapprehension I run a photography business... it's my passion as a hobby.
I sell and buy postage stamps!

That's a 'bit over the top'.
They would not stop a whole country's motorway traffic ( unless you equate a fire in a tunnel .... with nuclear attack ) !

It doesn't need a bomb for the M25 to do that.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

Thanks for supporting my earlier judgement of FF's comments SFD, it seems there is a certain displayed consistency!

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I'll be back!