Emergency exercise closes Hindhead Tunnel

Highways England has released the first pictures of a safety exercise which closed the Hindhead Tunnel on the A3.

During the exercise, emergency services dealt with a simulated collision involving multiple vehicles.

While the tunnel operators were responding to the initial collision, a second collision was simulated further back with one vehicle catching fire and filling the tunnel with smoke.

The joint exercise was attended by tunnel operators and the emergency services from Surrey and Hampshire that could potentially be called to a real incident inside the tunnel.

The aim of the exercise was to test the response of the emergency services dealing with a road traffic collision and fire inside the tunnel. It is a legal requirement that a full scale exercise is carried out every four years.