Full scale fire tests were conducted in YingZuiYan Road Tunnel, an 1852 m long double tube road tunnel located in Yunnan province of western China. Under three different longitudinal ventilation velocities of 0.5 m/s, 1.5 m/s, 2 m/s and 3 m/, the response characteristics of optical fiber temperature detector, traditional linear heat detector and two infrared wavelength flame detector were tested. Smoke layer temperature, CO concentration distribution were measured. The similarity of longitudinal and vertical distribution of CO concentration and temperature rise was analyzed. Results showed that the optical fiber detection system seemed to be more reliable than the traditional linear heat detection system. The flame detection system gives the fastest response to the fire with regardless of the wind speed and fire size. The higher the longitudinal ventilation velocity, the lower the temperature below the ceiling and its increasing rate, and the later the response of the temperature-based fire detection system. When the longitudinal ventilation velocity is up to 3 m/s, it will be hard for a current temperature-based tunnel fire detection system to respond to the fire at the early stage. The fire alert criteria should be setup more rationally based on the local normal longitudinal ventilation velocity, cross-sectional size and ambient temperature of the road tunnel. The local vertical distribution of CO concentration and the smoke temperature correlate reasonably well. However, the smoke temperature decayed longitudinally much faster than the CO concentration.