World News : Channel Tunnel face some disruption for months for repairs damage??
Freight and passenger traffic resumed on Saturday in the Channel Tunnel linking Britain to continental Europe after a fire on Thursday that completely halted traffic and caused chaos for thousands of people.
Eurostar, which runs passenger trains through the undersea tunnel, said it would run up to 12 trains each way on Saturday between London and Paris and up to six each way between London and Brussels.
That represents about half the usual traffic through the tunnel, normally used by 40,000 people every day.
”Trains are operating through the single tunnel that is unaffected by the fire,” Eurostar said in a statement, advising ticket holders to turn up at the scheduled time.
”Eurostar will seek to accommodate them on the first available train. This is likely to mean longer than normal waiting times before departure. Journey times will also be longer than normal,” the company said.
Services will, nevertheless, face some disruption for months as Eurotunnel repairs damage from the fire which started at 3pm on Thursday, burned until 9am on Friday and destroyed a truck-carrying Shuttle train. Temperatures reached as high as 1,000°C, according to the French interior minister.
The test train followed checks by Eurotunnel staff on the southern tunnel, which was not used by the affected train, to ensure there was no smoke or other damage. Staff were then due to check sections of the northern tunnel away from the main fire site to check for damage caused before the fire was spotted.
Services will initially use only the southern tunnel, with batches of Eurotunnel car and truck Shuttles, Eurostar passenger trains and cross-Channel freight trains taking it in turns to head in each direction.
The tunnel’s closure caused chaos for travellers and, given the uncertainty over the reopening schedule, Eurostar warned passengers holding tickets for weekend travel to find alternative transport.
The fire broke out on a truck on board the train 11km before it reached the French end of the 50km tunnel, forcing the evacuation of 32 drivers and the train crew. French newspapers reported it had been caused by overheating of a truck’s brake system. At its peak, hundreds of firefighters from both sides of the Channel were tackling the blaze.
French police on Friday remained in charge of the tunnel section around the fire site. However, when control is handed back to Eurotunnel, repairs are bound to take months. The only previous serious tunnel fire, in November 1996, destroyed only half a train and the latest fire seems to have reached similar temperatures to that one. It took six months for repairs because so much of the concrete tunnel lining was damaged.
After an initial period using only the southern tunnel, Eurotunnel will gradually bring back into use the unaffected two-thirds of the northern tunnel, with trains using a crossover into the southern tunnel to avoid the damaged section. The closure of the last section of the northern tunnel will cause most problems at the tunnel’s busiest times, such as Friday evenings.
“We will have disruption, but we do lots of planned maintenance where we close a tunnel segment without having a major impact on the timetable,” said Eurotunnel.
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