Welsh Govt must hold urgent inquiry into tunnel fire chaos

I'VE heard it dubbed the highway to hell, and last Thursday the A55 certainly lived up to its reputation when a lorry caught fire in the westbound Conwy tunnel.

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A heavy-duty crane erupted into flames, causing traffic chaos worse than any many locals have seen before. On my way back from visiting a relative at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd it took me two and a half hours to travel a distance of just over two miles - from the West End of Colwyn Bay to the slip road to Llandudno and the Conwy Valley.

In fact, I was lucky - a pal took three hours to travel from her home in Glan Conwy to the popularly known Black Cat roundabout at the same junction. Others are said to have endured journeys of six or seven hours from Bangor to the same point.

The vehicle fire in the tunnel was unusually fierce and resulted in the emergency services declaring it a major incident so disruption to traffic flow on the A55 was inevitable, but was apparent to me and others was the lack of an effective plan to ensure that traffic was diverted to other routes.