Bad Weather In Europe
Leaves Passenger Stranded
French
President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the head of Eurostar, the
French train authority, to get Channel Tunnel passenger traffic
moving again by Tuesday.
Eurostar, the only rail link between Britain and continental
Europe, has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending
tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside
the Channel Tunnel late on Friday. More than 2,000 people were
trapped for hours during the incident.
On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and
ordered him to get traffic moving by Tuesday. The SNCF owns a
majority stake in Eurostar.
Eurostar head of operations Nicolas Petrovic told newsmen he was
confident of a partial return to service on Tuesday.
Sarkozy asked the president of Eurostar present, ’measures to
ensure that such incidents do not recur.’
The shutdown hit holiday travel plans, affecting 40,000 people.
An earlier estimate put the number of those inconvenienced at
55,000.
The operations manager on Monday blamed the problem on very dry
snow that was sucked into the locomotives and then turned into
condensation, which caused the trains' electrical circuits to
fail.
More snow was forecast for Monday night and Tuesday in Calais,
where the train ducks into the tunnel on the French side of the
Channel.
Probe
On Monday, Eurostar announced it had commissioned an
independent review into the problems, naming one French and one
British expert to lead the inquiry.
Eurostar commercial director Nick Mercer said three test trains
sent through the Channel Tunnel on Sunday ran successfully, but
that it became clear that snow was being sucked into the trains
in a way that has never happened before.
With a huge backlog of passengers building, Eurostar is blocking
any sales until after Christmas.
For those seeking alternative routes between Paris, Brussels and
London, the winter weather was dealing out more bad news.
Nearly half of all flights out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle and
Orly airports were cut on Sunday.
Belgium was also badly hit, with passengers in Brussels lining
up for hours in an effort to rebook flights.
AP/Yinka
