To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser thatsupports HTML5video
People have complained of ‘utter carnage’ after being stranded in the Eurotunnel for hours in ‘boiling hot’ temperatures.
Passengers on yesterday’s 3.50pm service from Calais to Folkestone were evacuated after it broke down beneath the English Channel.
Hundreds were forced to walk along a service tunnel, an experience some likened to being in a ‘disaster movie’.
Videos posted online showed holidaymakers wearily wandering alongside the 31-mile rail route between Britain and France, some laden with heavy suitcases and others with confused dogs.
Passengers were eventually transferred to a cargo train, after being stuck in the sub-sea tunnel for nearly five hours due to issues with the replacement transport.
It took Sarah Fellows, 37, from Birmingham, 18 hours to return home from a family holiday in France.
She said: ‘The service tunnel was terrifying, it was like a disaster movie.
‘You were just walking into the abyss not knowing what was happening. We all had to stay under the sea in this big queue.
‘There was a woman crying in the tunnel, another woman having a panic attack who was travelling alone.
‘They were expecting really older people to walk for a mile down the middle of a tunnel under the sea.’
Sarah says Border Force told passengers the tunnel had been evacuated only one other time in the last 17 years.
Passengers said that the Eurotunnel train was initially stopped due to a heat sensor alarm that kept going off – leading to a full train inspection.
Water was handed out due to ‘boiling hot’ conditions.
Another passenger who was evacuated, but did not want to be named, said there was further chaos when passengers eventually reached England.
He added: ‘We were stuck down there for at least five hours.
‘If I’ve got a gripe it’s that they knew several hundred people were arriving at Folkestone who hadn’t eaten for five, six or more hours and there was absolutely nothing for us here.
‘Just huge queues for Burger King.’
Meanwhile travellers in Calais had been told to stay away from the terminal until 6am on Wednesday, with pictures showing gridlock at the shuttle terminal late into Tuesday evening.
A spokesman for Eurotunnel Le Shuttle had said: ‘A train has broken down in the tunnel and we are in the process of transferring customers to a separate passenger shuttle via the service tunnel, to return to our Folkestone terminal.
We apologise sincerely for this inconvenience.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Source: Read Full Article
