Coming soon to the Big Dig: fire exits!

I swear the sheer lunacy of Boston’s boondoggle could not get any more surreal. Now it turns out that several fire exits in the $14.6 billion (with a “B”) public project are boarded up, blocked, or, um, missing:

Fire Commissioner Paul A. Christian said yesterday that although he is concerned that fire exits are blocked and fire doors missing, Big Dig officials do not need to replace them immediately because the $14.6 billion project remains under construction.

The Fire Department's approval was the last hurdle before the tunnels could open to traffic, and that approval required all fire doors to be in place. The department approved the northbound tunnel in March 2003 and the southbound later that same year. The tunnels handle more than 200,000 vehicles a day.

Asked why that requirement isn't being enforced now, Christian replied: ''I'm not going to shut the tunnels down."

Ironically, many of the fire doors are blocked so that Big Dig officials can fix the hundreds of water leaks in the tunnel walls.