Gran Sasso Tunnel cleaning activities completed. This morning at 6:00 a.m., work crews completed vacuum cleaning over the entire surface of 20 km of tunnels. The work closed almost a week ahead of schedule. The canopy cleaning activities were started on the night of October 14-15, in the presence of Giancarlo Cancelleri, deputy minister of infrastructure and transport. According to forecasts, the work was expected to be completed next Monday, due to the enormous size of the structures involved, each tunnel is in fact about ten kilometers long.
The one adopted under the Gran Sasso is an innovative technique. In cases like these, highway tunnels are simply washed with water and detergents. Whereas here, to zero out any possible form of water contamination, a technique that had never been tried before was adopted. Smog residues were removed from the tunnel canopy with powerful machines to vacuum and filter dust and debris.
In total, the operation involved something like 224 thousand square meters of surface area, equal to 32 soccer fields. Not only that, the construction site was set up and taken down every night. And 15 teams per shift worked there, scraping the vaults and vacuuming all the dust, for a total of 50 workers and technicians.
Other measures were taken to avoid any possible contamination of soil and water. In the sections affected by the works, the highway roadways and gutters were completely covered with large plastic tarpaulins, which were used only once. At the end of the work, they were, in fact, folded up and sent to specialized facilities certified to treat these residues. To reduce the impact of the noise on the fauna surrounding the tunnels, the entrance was always closed with tarps that also prevented any dust from escaping from the tunnel. During the activity with sensors and specialized personnel, both the air inside the tunnels and the noise level were kept under control.
With the tunnels cleaned, over the next few days, again during night hours, the georadar and visual inspections that the Ministry has imposed since last May for all the tunnels of the Italian highway network will begin.
The Strada dei Parchi Concessionaire with this technical and organizational effort put in place is counting on being able to meet the timeframe indicated by the Ministry for the structural verification of the tunnels of its network. The company with traditional systems is in fact operating and cleaning all tunnels of A24 and A25.
(Ansa) – L’Aquila, Nov. 17, 2020 – Work on cleaning the Gran Sasso tunnel has been completed a few days ahead of schedule . A complex and innovative activity that involved some 50 people and enabled a valuable step forward toward securing the Gran Sasso aquifer.
Checks with georadar and visual inspections, which the Ministry has imposed since last May for all tunnels on the Italian highway network, will begin in the coming days.
“Having managed to avoid the closure to traffic of the Gran Sasso tunnel, a measure that would have cut central Italy in two, in order to carry out work inside the two tubes has avoided disastrous consequences, especially for commuters and commercial traffic. We thank Strada dei Parchi for being able to shorten the time needed to carry out the cleanup and thus reduce inconvenience to those using the A 24.
Now, also through the commissioner for the securing of the Gran Sasso water system, Corrado Gisonni, we will continue to monitor the continuation of the work, hoping to further shorten the time frame to ensure the safety of the aqueducts serving the communities of Teramo and L’Aquila.” This was stated by Abruzzo Region President Marco Marsilio and his deputy Emanuele Imprudente.
