LONDON: All Eurostar trains were cancelled on Saturday due to flooded tunnels in southern England, causing misery for tens of thousands of New Year travellers in the second major disruption in 10 days.
The latest cancellations follow a wildcat strike by French unions days before Christmas and weather warnings from the UK’s Met Office for rain, snow and ice across large parts of the country.
Dismayed travellers, some in tears, were left stranded at London’s St Pancras station after Eurostar cancelled all services for the entire day, affecting an estimated over 30,000 people.
Newly-weds Nicole Carrera, 29, and her husband Christopher, 31, visiting from New York, said their plans to spend New Year’s Eve at Disneyland Paris had been “ruined”.
After earlier cancelling all trains up to 4:00 pm UK time (1600 GMT), Eurostar said flooding in two tunnels had “not improved”, forcing it to “take the unfortunate decision to cancel all services for the rest of the day”.
It said it was “extremely sorry” for the impact it would have on customers at “a vital time to get home at the end of the festive season”.
Australians Christina David, 25, and Georgina Benyamin, 26, from Sydney, had planned to make Paris their final stop in Europe before flying home.
David said she felt “frustrated, angry, sad”, adding that “there were lots of people crying” and that they now had nowhere to stay.
Eurostar runs services from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.
The services were cancelled after the flooding occurred near Ebbsfleet International station in Kent.
Water company Southern Water said the inundation was thought to have been caused by a burst pipe feeding the tunnels’ fire safety system.
According to High Speed 1 (HS1), which runs the railway line, restoring services was “proving challenging and will take time”.
“Engineers worked throughout the night to remove the water and continue to do so… but the volume of water in the tunnel is unprecedented,“ it said in a statement.
– Year of travel chaos –
Simon Shaw, 36, and his wife Heather, 37, from central England, had been due to travel to the French Alps for a skiing holiday with friends and family.
“We just arrived and saw everything was cancelled this morning… it was chaos,“ Simon Shaw said.
Saturday’s cancelled services top off a year of travel disruption for UK travellers due to strikes, storms and other problems.
Travellers to France in April endured waiting times of up to 16 hours at Dover due to larger than expected numbers and weather conditions.
In August, flights to and from the UK were hit by a technical fault affecting air traffic control systems while in November Storm Ciaran saw ferry crossings and flights cancelled.
More than a year of walk-outs by rail workers over pay and conditions amid a cost of living crisis has also impacted travellers.
Although the RMT rail union last month said its members had voted in favour of a pay deal, the Aslef union, which represents drivers, has yet to come to an agreement.
Eurostar is owned 55.75 percent by French state-owned SNCF Voyageurs.
It almost went bankrupt during the Covid-19 pandemic but was saved with a 290-million-euro bailout from shareholders including the French government. -AFP
