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Eurostar facing criticism in Christmas shutdown report

Investigation into tunnel chaos expected to censure company for failing to protect engines from winter weather

* Peter Walker and Lizzy Davies
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 17.39 GMT

An independent investigation into the chaos that left tens of thousands of Eurostar passengers trapped or stranded just before Christmas is expected to heavily criticise the company for failing to adequately protect its locomotives from the winter weather.

The report published tomorrow will point to inadequate filters, which allowed snow to get through ventilation grilles and short-circuit electrical systems, as the main cause of the breakdown of five passenger trains in the tunnel on 18 December. About 2,400 people were trapped for up to 16 hours, many complaining subsequently that they had no proper access to food, water or toilet facilities.

All Eurostar services were cancelled for several days, bringing pandemonium to stations as passengers, unable to take fully-booked flights and ferries, struggled to get home for Christmas.

At the time, Eurostar said the problem was caused by particularly fine snow particles and could not have been anticipated. The company also blamed Eurotunnel, which operates the Channel tunnel, for delays in rescuing passengers and hinted at possible legal action. Tomorrow's report is likely to largely vindicate Eurotunnel, which pointedly stressed in December that its own very similar locomotives, used to pull the car and lorry shuttles it operates, had not suffered the same problem.

According to newspaper reports in France, the investigation by Christopher Garnett, formerly in charge of the GNER rail franchise and Claude Gressier, a senior French rail engineer, will recommend urgent action, including improvements to cold-weather protection on Eurostar trains.

According to Le Parisien, the other charge likely to be laid at Eurostar's door is that its customer care buckled under pressure and left passengers badly informed about events outside the tunnel. The review is expected to recommend the creation of a "crisis unit" to keep passengers up to date in such events, as well as improvements to staff training.

Relations between Eurostar and Eurotunnel are also expected to come under scrutiny, with sources indicating that greater coordination is needed to ensure a smooth journey for passengers. French reports said the tunnel operator would be told to consider stationing extra emergency locomotives nearby in case trains need to be towed out. It may also, they said, be encouraged to improve tunnel lighting as a precaution in the event of an onboard electrical failure.

Earlier this week, Eurostar denied a report by the specialist magazine Ville, Rail and Transports which alleged that seasonal "winterisation" procedures had not been carried out. "We protected the carriages from October, as in every other year," said a Eurostar spokesperson. "But the quality of the snow in December was such that the protection of our electrical material proved insufficient." While refusing further comment ahead of the review's release, the company said it had already made changes to its services to better cope with "exceptional weather".

Snowfall in Kent today brought further delays, albeit less serious ones, to rail traffic in the tunnel. A points problem saw Eurostar services delayed by up to two hours, while Eurotunnel was running a limited shuttle operation.

The pre-Christmas chaos was a public relations disaster for Eurostar, with the company widely perceived as having failed to respond with sufficient speed. Reports spread of children being left in the dark, without food or drink, and of train staff breaking down in front of passengers.

By way of an apology, the company said it was expecting to pay up to £10m in compensation to passengers whose travel plans were wrecked. In a message to customers, the company's chief executive, Richard Brown, admitted it had not delivered "the standard of service you expect".

Roger Ford, an expert on the rail industry, said it would be hard to ascertain how much blame could be attached to Eurostar before the details were available.

"But whatever happens, I don't think it can be any more embarrassing than it was in December," he said. "The central thing seems to be that the management didn't handle the incident very well. They seemed a bit vague about how the snow was going in. There wasn't the technical depth that I've seen at other organisations I've been to."


Eurostar snow delays report is released

Richard Scott,
BBC Transport correspondent
Page last updated at 22:56 GMT, Thursday, 11 February 2010

A report into the failure of six Eurostar trains before Christmas will be published later.

The breakdowns left more than 2,500 people stuck in the Channel Tunnel, some for over five hours, amid total delays of more than 16 hours.

Services were cancelled for three days, leaving around 100,000 people stranded.

The report is expected to say that Eurostar should improve the snow protection on its trains, and upgrade tunnel communications equipment.

17-hour journey

One of those trapped in the tunnel was Joanne Richards. She was travelling with her 13-year-old son, Jac, who has cerebral palsy.

Their journey, which should have taken just three hours, took 17.

"For a period of time I was on my own with Jac, which was very worrying," she said.

"Other passengers were great - they helped a great deal - and there was a blitz spirit, but by the end of the 17 hours Jac looked... really ill and we feared for him. It was really the trip from hell," she added.

'Winterisation'

The problems stemmed from heavy snow in northern France. Eurostar said at the time that the conditions were the worst for running trains it had seen in 15 years of operations.

The company normally carries out a "winterisation" programme on all its trains to protect them from snow, but the snow before Christmas was finer than normal, according to Eurostar, and managed to get through the grills on the side of the power car.

When the train went into the tunnel where it was much warmer, the snow then melted, short-circuiting the trains' electrics.

The company suspended services for three days, while it carried out emergency modifications.

Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded in London, Paris and Brussels. Many made their own way using domestic rail and ferry services. Others decided not to travel at all.

The company said it would refund the tickets of those affected and pay for out-of-pocket expenses, such as hotel accommodation and offer compensation, depending on how severely the passenger had been affected.

My Eurostar hell - 'It was the worst train you could imagine'

• Company had no coping plan for tunnel breakdown
• Staff service appalling, with one car 'an open toilet'

* Caroline Davies
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 February 2010 19.39 GMT

With its staff "in hiding" and both ­temperatures and panic rising, there were few worse places to be than aboard the "Disney train" during the Eurostar's pre-Christmas debacle.

Five trains had broken down deep in the Channel tunnel on 18 December. But, said the authors of a report released today examining the causes of the ensuing chaos, "of all the trains to really get in a mess, this was the worst train that you could imagine".

The plight of passengers aboard train 9057 has been highlighted in a damning 87-page summary of an independent inquiry, commissioned after the Eurostar "meltdown" in heavy snow.

The December incident led to 2,500 people trapped in trains, and 100,000 stranded through delays. It cost the company £10m in compensation and caused untold damage to Eurostar's image.

The document concludes that Eurostar had "no plan in place" to cope with such an event. As a consequence, passengers were treated "appallingly".

It was "not a glorious rescue", stated the report's authors, but rather "an experience no passengers should be forced to go through again".

The company was found "wanting" over its winter maintenance of trains, its emergency procedures and its communication with passengers, said the report's authors, Christopher Garnett, a former chief executive officer of GNER East Coast Main Line, and Claude Gressier, a French transport expert.

The failure of the trains was caused after 40cm (16in) of fine snow fell over ­Calais and got sucked into the power cars. Once in the warm tunnel a build up of condensation, combined with metal dust in the tunnel, caused the electrics to short-circuit.

But, if the report was critical of the winter maintenance and snow-proofing of the trains, it was even more scathing about the performance both of Eurostar, and Eurotunnel, which operates the tunnel, in communicating with passengers.

On the "Disney train" the Eurostar crew "appeared to go into hiding", and passengers were left without heating, lighting or information. There were 664 passengers on board, including many British families with small children returning from Disneyland, Paris, and it was left to an off-duty Essex police officer to "step in" and "take control" during the ordeal, which lasted 11 hours.

Having left Disneyland at just after 7.30pm, the train first got stuck behind a broken-down train, then stopped as the driver tried to move out of the tunnel. Despite temperatures of about 25C (77F) inside the tunnel, and humidity between 70-85%, the air conditioning, ventilation and lighting disappeared.

Parents stripped children and babies down to underwear and nappies. In the heat and dark, and with no information from the train operator, passengers "suffered stress and panic attacks".

The crew was French, and English passengers could not understand announcements by the train manager due to the strong French accent.

The "crew were generally unhelpful, and appeared intimidated by passengers". They "ignored passengers, refused to answer questions and appeared to go into hiding", the report said.

A police officer on board, 35-year-old Chris Sedgwick, "stepped in, and, according to passenger reports, took control of the situation", while an off-duty paramedic gave first aid, said the report. The passengers were offered no food or water. Eventually they started to open the train doors themselves, as PC Sedgwick and two other off-duty police officers helped.

The officers also oversaw the evacuation of passengers to a rescuing shuttle train as "no Eurostar staff were visible" and there was a "lack of instruction".

But, if conditions on the Eurostar train were bad, "the conditions on the shuttle were, frankly, appalling", said Garnett.

It was cold on the shuttle, which was normally used as a vehicle transporter, and "all passengers, including pregnant women and small children had to sit on greasy floors or lean again the sides of the carriage". The report said "toilet facilities quickly became unpleasant", being blocked and overflowing. Staff provided extra toilet paper, but no one to clean the facilities. "This led passengers to designating one carriage as an open toilet area."

No senior Eurostar or Eurotunnel staff were visible, and "no one walked through the train to see how people were".

Of the 21 recommendations in the report, one advises that train managers be given special "stress management training" similar to that given air crews. There is also a suggestion that more rescue trains and speedier and more comprehensive evacuation plans are put in place. Modification and redesign of some parts of the trains, better lighting, and better communications in the tunnel are also advised.

Responding to the report, Eurostar said it had modified its trains and more work was being done. The company was spending £30m on implementing the recommendations, including £12m on a new communications system. It was, with Eurotunnel, buying two more rescue trains.

Eurostar's chief executive, Richard Brown, said: "I know we let our passengers down before Christmas and I am determined to put things right. Our priority is to win back the confidence of our passengers by taking all the action necessary to prevent this ever happening again."

The report emphasised that Eurostar had no plan in place and had had to improvise. It concluded: "Passengers must not be forced to go through this again."

PC Chris Sedgwick is the star of the Eurostar report. Travelling back from Disneyland, Paris, with his wife and children, aged three and seven months, he came to the fore as Eurostar staff "appeared to go into hiding".

"People were getting stressed and anxious. There was a young boy in my carriage who was in a terrible state because he had been in a house fire, and the alarms going off were giving him panic attacks. Somebody just needed to calm everybody down," the Essex police officer said today.

He approached the train manager and suggested he make regular Tannoy announcements.

"I said, if you can speak every 10 minutes, even if you say nothing, your're saying something and people will think someone is in control. But he didn't do anything."

With two other off-duty officers on board, PC Sedgwick, who is still undergoing his police training, realised they would have to "take control. It was dark, it was hot, people just wanted guidance. I was sending messages over the Tannoy asking people to remain calm, and to move around as little as possible."

"The conditions were horrendous during the evacuation. It shouldn't have been left to someone like me.

"There should have been a contingency plan, an emergency box, people in high visibility vests, basic first aid equipment.

"People were trying to smash glass doors initially, which could have led to some serious injuries.

"If someone had severed an artery, for the two or three hours involved in evacuating the train there would have been no help for them.

"We were left to make our own judgments. Afterwards, on reflection, I was a little bit over-wrought by the fact any wrong decisions I made could have had catastrophic consequences.

"That responsibility was certainly more than I signed up for when I agreed to go to Disneyland."