Most of the tens of thousands of drivers who travel through Interstate 70’s Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel every day make it up the steep approach just fine.
It’s the few motorists that don’t that worry Paul Fox, the Colorado Department of Transportation’s tunnel program manager for its Denver metro region
Every week or so, Fox said, a car ignites near the tunnel — usually a fluid leak that hits the exhaust. And five times in the last seven years, Fox said, a vehicle has burned inside the tunnel itself.
“The stakes are very high,” Fox said. “We could damage the tunnels and then we're going to have to close and that would put an impact on our economy.”
CDOT officials estimate that the state’s economy takes a nearly $2 million hit every hour the I-70 mountain corridor is closed. The interstate’s two large tunnels — the Eisenhower Johnson under the Continental Divide, and the Hanging Lake tunnel in Glenwood Canyon — are particularly vulnerable spots.
A high-volume sprinkler system is Eisenhower tunnel’s first line of fire defense. But now, CDOT is updating its second: The agency has replaced that tunnel’s 36-year-old fire truck with a new larger, more powerful rig that will be able to respond to fires faster, for longer and more accurately.
“We don't get to see new trucks that often, so it's nice to see one in my career up here,” Fox said.
One key upgrade: CDOT’s old truck required firefighters to manually set water pressure using mechanical handles, while the new one has LEDs and push buttons that are much easier to use when every second counts.
“It makes it a simple operation because when there's a fire going on, you get stressed, your adrenaline is going, you don't think clearly,” he said.
The Hanging Lake tunnel will also get a new truck. That tunnel doesn’t have a sprinkler system but has never seen a car fire inside its walls, said Shilo Holbrook, a CDOT maintenance worker. Still, he said, CDOT crews routinely respond to vehicle fires and wildfires in Glenwood Canyon using a truck dating back to the early 1990s.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I mean, I don't want nothing bad to happen, but if something does bad happen, we'll be ready to go. We'll be ready to help out.”
