Hundreds of Eurostar passengers were stranded at the Calais-Frethun train station overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday after 1,000 refugees and migrants stormed the railway tracks approaching the Channel Tunnel. Two trains had to return to the St Pancras and Gare du Nord train stations from which they had set out, and three more were delayed for hours.
The transport chaos was the worst seen since late July and early August, when up to 2,000 migrants reached the tracks each night. On Monday, a French official travelling with prime minister Manuel Valls to Calais had boasted that incursions onto the Eurotunnel site had been reduced 10-fold in one month, with "only" 100 to 200 migrants making it through the obstacle course of fences, razor-wire and sniffer dogs nightly.
Eurostar train number 9055 left the Gare du Nord at 7.42pm and was forced to stop at the tunnel entry at 9.30pm. It sat on the tracks for four hours before being towed back to Calais Frethun station, where passengers spent the rest of the night.
Geraldine Guyon, a passenger interviewed by the Agence France Presse, said travellers were given no food until 7.30 the following morning. They booed announcements over the loudspeaker, the last of which was made at 1.30am.
Police patrols
Eurostar said not more than 750 passengers – the maximum capacity of its 18-car trains – were stranded in the station.
Clothilde, a Frenchwoman who lives in London, said the blocked passengers watched police patrolling alongside the immobile train. “We didn’t see the migrants but we knew they were all over the roof, and that’s why they waited for a helicopter to make sure there were no more migrants over our heads.”
Eurostar cut the electricity which powers the trains to avoid electrocuting the migrants. Several passengers were allowed to leave the train so they could catch taxis to the ferry port or for the two and a half hour drive to Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport.
The words “The vital link” are painted in large letters above the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, which is situated at the bottom of a deep, pharaonic-looking valley with nearly vertical walls. When one sees the parallel fences stretching for miles along the approach to the tunnel, it is difficult to imagine how the migrants get through. The two fences closest to the tracks are capped with concertina razor wire, while the third fence is several stories high. At least nine migrants were killed while trying to stow away on trains headed for Britain this summer.
Employees traumatised
A union representative told Mr Valls on Monday that Eurotunnel employees are traumatised by the incursions and deaths.
Eurotunnel yesterday issued a communique explaining it had “significantly reduced intrusions” since July 1st. The company has installed six of 29 km of additional, four-metre high fences and has removed all vegetation from 40 of the 56 hectares of land it intends to clear near the site.
