many passengers have self-helped by booking themselves coaches, flights or ferries.
Eurostar sent texts and emails whilst many passengers were already in london and so ended up walking into chaos. There were hundreds of people panicking to find flights on their phones all over the concourse. The police outnumbered the eurostar staff.
Eurostar were really unclear about what to do. Were we supposed to wait? Go home? Arrange our own plans?
They could have at least been clear about refunds, especially if people found a way into France but didn't know if their return ticket would be valid if they cancelled.
Would it have been too much effort to put passengers on southeastern down to Dover and negotiated to get people onto ferries for sncf to take over in calais?
I'm told this is too difficult. Surely it must have been considered at some point in the last thirty years.
I learnt two things from this.
1. Don't rely on Eurostar.
2. Don't then Google eurostar as you'll find the investigation report from the snow incident a decade ago where they literally left passengers in car wagons and then evacuated the wrong train.