Train Passengers Trapped for Hours Under English Channel Before 'Terrifying' Evacuation: 'Like Disaster Movie'
Train passengers traveling deep beneath the English Channel were forced to suddenly evacuate along undersea tracks Tuesday.
In dramatic scenes captured on passenger video, the travelers on a train from Calais in France were eventually transferred to a replacement train and taken to a train terminal in Folkestone, England.
At 31.5 miles long (23.5 miles of which runs under the English Channel) the Channel Tunnel is the longest undersea tunnel in the world. At its deepest, it is 246 feet below sea level.
"A train has broken down in the tunnel and we are in the process of transferring customers to a separate passenger shuttle via the service tunnel, to return to our Folkestone terminal," Eurotunnel tweeted about the incident involving the shuttle that runs between France and England Tuesday. "We apologize sincerely for this inconvenience," it added.
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Getty A Eurostar train
CNN reported that per the PA Media Agency, the incident involved the 3:50 p.m. train from Calais to Folkestone. The train, which usually takes 35 minutes, was carrying hundreds of passengers and several dogs.
One of the train's passengers, Michael Harrison told PA that the lights went out and the train came to a stop about 10 minutes into the trip.
"We were told they needed to investigate an issue with the wheels," he said.
"It took approximately one and a half hours for them to investigate and obviously not find anything. They reset things and set off for another five minutes," Harrison added. "It happened again at which time we waited a further couple of hours to decide they couldn't see a problem but had to evacuate the train."
James Hamilton Passengers stranded in Channel Tunnel
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CNN said that Harrison told the outlet that passengers were evacuated through an emergency link tunnel that led to a service tunnel where they walked for 10 minutes to reach another train.
Travelers would ultimately arrive in the U.K. six hours after they'd initially boarded after more issues arose on the second train.
"The service tunnel was terrifying," another passenger, Sarah Fellows, told PA.
"It was like a disaster movie. You were just walking into the abyss not knowing what was happening. We all had to stay under the sea in this big queue," she added.
"There was a woman crying in the tunnel, another woman having a panic attack who was traveling alone," she continued. "They were expecting really older people to walk for a mile down the middle of a tunnel under the sea."
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Fellows said Border Force, a U.K. government agency, informed her that just one other evacuation has taken place in the tunnel over the past 17 years.
"The incident followed an alarm on board a shuttle," GetLink, the company that runs the shuttle service, told PEOPLE Wednesday. "The Shuttle was brought to a controlled stop and inspected.
"As a precautionary measure, for their safety and comfort, we transferred the passengers on board to another shuttle, via the service tunnel (which is there for exactly that purpose). We brought them to the passenger terminal building, where food and drinks were available, and then slowly brought out the original shuttle and reunited them with their vehicles.
"Operations like this do take time, but they are for the safety of everyone and must be conducted carefully."
The spokesperson added that GetLink "apologize to anyone who got caught up in the incident, but we stress that we will always put customer safety above everything."
