Cargo bays run end to end in Cumberland Gap Tunnel
Cargo bays. A lot of them. Lining the entire length of the tunnel, separating the north and south bound lanes. According to former workers they are rooms, and in these rooms are more doors, leading from one room to the next. It is not a simply a hallway between two ends of a tunnel like you might think.
The ceiling of the southbound side of the tunnel is significantly higher than the north bound side. Is it to accommodate larger military vehicles? Could the tunnel be some kind of “flight deck” or loading zone for fast, efficient loading of arms, even nuclear arms, on military vehicles in times of conflict?
mysterious doors in the tunnel lead deep into cumberland mountain
Little is known about these doors as current employees of the tunnel are forbidden to enter.
Former workers that helped build the tunnel say the door on the right of the northbound lane leads you to the water pouring down inside the mountain that makes up the lake the tunnel is supposedly built over.
The door on the right in the southbound lane leads you to the underground lake itself. This lake has no measurable depth. The former workers weren’t sure of it’s surface area either, for a miner’s headlamp shone across the waters would still not reveal an opposite shore. In other words, it’s big.
Still another door opens to another passage leading into the mountain above the southbound lane in the second story of the tunnel in what I refer to as the administrative section of the tunnel: the office-and-lobby-type areas behind the big glass windows. No one has any information about this passageway, other than the door is often propped open at night, visible when you are entering the northbound side of the tunnel toward Kentucky.
Other than this information, no one knows how much farther these passageways lead into the mountain, or their ultimate destination.
Extensive security cameras in place designed by former Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists
Ipix is a Tennessee company that makes surveillance cameras capable of projecting 360-degeree panoramic images. This company was founded in Oak Ridge by former scientists from the nuclear laboratory. These scientists’ company initially started working with “recording robots” for use in nuclear plants. But the invention of their PhotoBubbles and 360-degree camera surveillance put them at Cumberland Gap Tunnel, in what they describe as “mission critical imaging”.
IPIX Security is the leading supplier of Full-360 degree video surveillance technology for critical government and commercial security applications.
and
IPIX Security is a division of IPIX Corporation, a leader in mission critical imaging.
Congressman Wamp called the tunnel a “critical part of our nation’s infrastructure” and the reason why the expensive, high tech cameras were needed. If this is true, then how much more critical are the tunnels located on major interstates like I-40 and I-77? Yet these tunnels have no security cameras, let alone state-of-the-art cameras invented by nuclear scientists from the Secret City.
Hazmat escorts that seem more for the tunnel’s protection than ours
They make hazardous materials trucks, like gasoline tankers, pull off for private escort when both sides of the tunnel are open and operating normally.
They send the same hazmat trucks through the tunnel with regular traffic when they are working on one side of the tunnel. This destroys the logic that they make hazmat trucks stop for escort for our protection.
Not only do the hazmat truckers have to stop for escort through the tunnel 99% of the time, their records and logs are carefully checked by tunnel personnel while they are waiting.
Trucks that display a hazardous material placard are required to stop at the Cumberland Gap Tunnel inspection lanes. After stopping in the lane, a CGTA operator requests information from the driver such as Trucking Company name and address, DOT #, Truck license #, Truck Order # or bill of lading, origin and destination of goods, and driver’s name and signature. The operator then performs a walk around inspection of the truck and looks for possible hazardous material leaks. Trucks transporting Class 1 Explosives are prohibited and are turned around at the tunnel.
In retrospect, it almost seems like a security checkpoint. For a tunnel on a highway most people in the United States have never even heard of.
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