A large number of Eurotunnel passengers remained stranded for nearly five hours inside the Channel Tunnel at subsea level after a train broke down. The passengers had to be ushered to a service tunnel, many of them posted on social media.
The incident occurred happened late Tuesday, affecting the Eurotunnel Le Shuttle service that runs from Calais in France to Folkestone in the UK, media reports said.
Taking to social media, many travellers posted photos and videos showing them walking through the emergency service tunnel alongside the 50-km rail route after having to abandon their vehicles.
They were finally transferred to a replacement train to be taken to Folkestone in Kent, a BBC report said.
While some passengers walked through the tunnel, those on the Calais side were told to stay away from the terminal until 6 am on Wednesday, which led to large queues forming at the shuttle terminal, The Guardian reported.
Services were brought back to normal by late Wednesday morning.
Quoting Le Shuttle, the BBC report said the incident started when the train's alarms went off, which needed to be investigated. A spokesperson said such incidents were not exceptional, though not unusual.
"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]," the spokesman was quoted as saying.
Le Shuttle said all passengers were transferred "in line with safety procedures and as a comfort measure".
Many passengers, meanwhile, narrated their ordeal to media.
"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,” Sarah Fellows from Birmingham was quoted as saying in the BBC report.
"Several people were freaking out about being down in the service tunnel, it's a bit of a weird place…," said another traveller.