New Constructed Tunnel: Is it Safe in the Incident?

Dear Editor-in-Chief

According to the advance of civil engineering and transportation, the tunnel tends to increase as a number and be longer as a scale. It is divided to underground and undersea tunnel by location, and is sorted into railway and road tunnel by transportation. Channel Tunnel is world’s longest undersea railway tunnel that reaches a length of 50.45 km (1). Great Britain is connected to France by it. The longest tunnel in Korea is Geumjung Tunnel that is 20.3 km for express rail. The tunnel is built recently adapts high-tech equipments like ventilation, evacuation, fire prevention, and monitor system.

The rescue operation in tunnel accident has some properties in comparison with natural disaster. Illumination, oxygen supply, and approach to accident spot are under limitation.

Patients should be classified into three grades by triage system like International Committee of the Red Cross category (2). Rapid treatment and transfer is essential by triage (3). Severe injured patients as Injury Severity Score (ISS) over 15 need to be transported to Level 1 trauma center directly that result in higher survival rate than via Level 2 or 3 (4). In case of shortage of hospital beds, reverse triage is helpful for safe early discharge of inpatients (5).