Subscribe to RSSEurostar Nightmare: Not Everyone’s Buying The Official Excuse (Video)
The Eurostar services between France and England remain suspected for the third day as controversy flares about the company’s explanation for how five trains broke down inside the tunnel, leaving over a thousand passengers scared, hungry, cold and locked inside the train underground for up to 15 hours.
The French transport minister, calling the incident abnormal, says he can’t understand how the vital transport link could fail just because there was snow outside and can’t accept that bad weather alone immobilised the trains’ electrical system.
He is initiating an inquiry while Eurostar is setting up its own inquiry led by Christopher Garnett, a former commercial director of Eurotunnel and CEO of rail company GNER, and Claude Gressier,France’s Inspector General of bridges and roads.
Eurostar says snow shields used to protect the electrics had worked for the 15 years it has run trains through the tunnel but the present weather conditions were extreme. It was now working to “enhance” those snow shields.
The company claims the trains became stuck in the tunnel because the air inside was much warmer than the air outside the tunnel entrance in France . A spokesman said in a radio interview: “It’s a bit like taking a bottle of beer out of the fridge into a warm room — within minutes it’s covered in condensation.”
The way the company tells the way the situation unfolded: the problem began when one train became stuck. It was helped out of the tunnel by a Eurotunnel locomotive. That hauled it to London with passengers l on board. On the 2nd and 3rd trains, passengers had to walk through the tunnel to a Eurotunnel train, which got them to the exit. One train was pulled out of the tunnel, but they had trouble getting the other one out.
The other two trains were near each other when they stopped. Eurotunnel locomotives coupled them and pushed or pulled them to the tunnel on the UK side. Passengers from the fifth train boarded the one in front, and Eurotunnel locomotives then towed that train to London.
One conspiracy theory doing the rounds is that it’s related to threatened industrial action that was supposed to happen this weekend passed when the trains got stuck. Eurostar train managers had threatened to strike during the weekend over meal allowances . Eurostar had said the strike wouldn’t affect service and the strike was called off.
Here’s one cynic who doesn’t believe the official explanation:
1 Comments
Re:Video: I highly doubt the attention to facts of somebody who believes governments around the world are secretly controlled by a Zionist conspiracy.