The award-winning Norwegian disaster film “The Tunnel” was captured by reality during filming two years ago.
A lorry started burning inside the Gudvanga tunnel, the recording in the Høyanger tunnel had to be interrupted and moved, because it had to be reopened to traffic.
On Tuesday this week, the dramatic reality moved even closer when a car with four Dutch tourists and their Volda-resident relative caught fire inside the 4.5 kilometer long Oppljö tunnel between Stryn and Skjåk.
Also from that tunnel there are scenes in the recent disaster film.
ONE KILOMETER INSIDE THE TUNNEL: The remains of a burning Renault Megame. Five Dutch people got out on time, and were helped out into the fresh air by a German motorhome. Photo: Bengt Flaten / Fjordingen.
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In a few years, all three narrow and steep horror tunnels between Stryn and Skjåk could be history.
After many years of pressure from local politicians, the transport industry and the business community west of Strynefjellet, the Storting decided just before the summer holidays this year that a new, three-lane and 15 kilometer long Strynefjell tunnel will be given very high priority in the new Norwegian Transport Plan.
The first estimate for the allocation is DKK 500 million. Central tunnel advocates on the Stryn side hope to start construction in 2025-26.
Mirror against mirror
Local experts do not come across any fatal accidents in the 43 years the Oppljö tunnel has been in operation, with increasingly dense traffic and ever larger lorries, which must pass each other mirror to mirror in crab speed.
A recent calculation shows that fish, meat and industrial goods worth NOK 70 billion a year are transported from west to east through the tunnels in Strynefjellet.
Now the first catastrophic accident was even closer to reality, on which the catastrophe film “The Tunnel” is built. In addition to goods transport, Stryn is the largest tourist municipality between Bergen and Ålesund.
MIRROR AGAINST MIRROR: It is so narrow in the Oppljö tunnel between Stryn and Skjåk that the lorries have to pass each other at a snail’s pace. Photo: Hannah Sofie Flaten.
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– With the traffic picture we had two or three weeks ago, the tunnel fire could have been catastrophic. A long time in such smoke could have been serious, if people had survived at all. It would have been enough if a bus had entered the tunnel, not to mention motorhomes and caravans that it would have been impossible to turn around, says fire chief John Jatgeir Vinsrygg in Stryn to the local newspaper Fjordingen.
The real hero
Both editor Bengt Flaten in Fjordingen and the producer of the “Tunnel” film Einar Loftesnes call Jon Nedre-Flo “the real hero” in the tunnel drama.
Dagbladet meets the 72-year-old sane and experienced long-distance transport driver on the phone the next day.
– Is not this finished yet? I am in the workshop with the car to get home to Stryn, the driver veteran says soberly.
He remembers that King Olav opened the tunnel in 1978.
And he repeats what he has said and meant more loudly for many years:
– Now it is high time to get started with a new tunnel.
About the car fire on Tuesday, with a kilometer of road for people and toxic smoke to get out one way towards Stryn and 3.5 kilometers out the other direction towards Skjåk, the driver says:
LIKE THE HORROR MOVIE: Black and toxic smoke pushes out of the Oppljo tunnel in the opening towards Stryn, one kilometer from the car fire. Towards the second opening in Skjåk, the smoke is 3.5 kilometers out. Photo: Bengt Flaten / Fjordingen.
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– I had come a kilometer into the tunnel from Stryn when smoke rolled out from the engine compartment of a car in front. There was a car between me and the burning car. The five Dutchmen had gotten out and were standing by the tunnel wall. They were picked up by a German-registered motorhome that had stopped, and drove them out into the fresh air.
Continued 450 kilometers
About his own participation, he says soberly:
– I probably stopped around 10 cars and a couple of motorcycles and made them turn around.
Jon Nedre-Flo himself continued on towards the tunnel opening in Skjåk and the 450 kilometers to Oslo with a fully loaded lorry. As the plan was.
Editor Bengt Flaten was inside the tunnel with the fire crews.
The horror scenario
– This was very close to the horror scenario, which many have feared and which many talk about afterwards. And Jon Nedre-Flo made a heroic effort in there. He’s a guy who does not care to be whole. He just wants to do his job, says Flaten to Dagbladet.
The main character Thorbjørn Harr in “The Tunnel” got an alarm when the filming in the Høyanger tunnel had to be stopped and moved after a lorry fire in the Gudvanga tunnel just over two years ago.
Tunnelbrann sabotaged filming: – Absolutely absurd
– This was a reminder that it is serious and serious things we are doing, said the actor to Dagbladet then.
57 tunnels of 370 kilometers
– I did not believe my own ears when I heard it, said the film’s director Pål Øie then.
Now he calls the recent tunnel fire “almost unreal”.
– There have been many text messages in recent days with reference to the fire. And I myself have been triggered to count how many tunnels we drive through from the home in Bergen to family and friends on Stranda. I have come to the conclusion that there are 57 tunnels on the 370 kilometers, says Øie now.
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