About cars being loaded into a non-air conditioned carriage on eurostar, temperatures intolerable, I collapsed?

[herbiwhore]

I've been complaining to le shuttle about this. they say nothing was done wrong and that all procedures were correctly followed - i just cannot believe this is the case.
facts of the matter are we were loaded onto a carriage last august, temperatures reached at least 40 degrees c with no air movement. at the time i was 20 weeks pregnant and after about 5 minutes of being loaded onto the train, i started to feel strange and when I got out of the car I collapsed in the heat, unable to move etc, flat on my back, could not stand up. i had to be carried by my arms and legs by other passengers to an air conditioned carriage. crew members couldnt really do anything but bring a bottle of water there seemed to be no first aid provision at all. an off duty nurse looked after me and she was amazing, laid me out in the back of her car, she was lovely, but it didnt feel right that the actual organisation had no provision for this eventuality.
i think this is really disgraceful and dangerous - customer services at le shuttle have said that 'crew followed all procedures' and that they are 'sorry i am not happy' and i have been issued with a £30 token.
its really not about the money - i have said I will not accept it. it was a horrible experience and I genuinely don't want others to go through it. there seems to be very little transparency of accountability. i've asked for a copy of their policy and procedures, health and safety guidelines, first aid policy etc and heard nothing - am i being unreasonable to think that policy and procedure could not have possibly been followed?

Op I hope you take this further.

Euro star/tunnel do seem appalling when it comes to passengers on their trains, think people stuck for hours with no working loo and no drinks, and no air.

I really feel for you and this has probably put me off going on the tunnel again.

You pay, to be safely transported from a to b, with air, with temp controls. you expect proper first aid if someone faints.

thanks misigri - thanks for yoru points.

MsRinky I would absolute have preferred to have been delayed, yes

OP - what would you have wanted them to do?

How did you try to escalate it? Did you get the contact details of someone higher up and have they also failed to reply?

What would you like to happen / see as a satisfactory outcome?

not to have loaderd the cars onto a faulty carriage

What they should have done is to close the carriage with the non-functioning aircon and bump the passengers onto a later service. My guess is that they were busy and someone took the calculated risk that bumping passengers would result in more grief than exposing them to potentially dangerous temperatures.

If the temperature really was 40C they were bloody lucky frankly, as an animal or an elderly person or a young baby might not have made such a rapid recovery.

For those who are saying put on the aircon, do you have any idea how dangerous it is to run a car engine in a confined space?!

i asked for it to be escalated by meail - no response for 6 weeks. i have not been given any contact details of anyone higher up.

a satisfactory outcome would be for me to be assured correct procedure was follwed by udnerstanding how such a situation came to occur - there must be warning lights or somethign like that if the air con is faulty, and this should be communicated to crew so the cars arent loaded - did that happen? I guess i dont believe taht all procedures were correctly followed, and i want to see this for myself by reading their policy and procedures - then I want a proper apology and an assurance that checks and balances have been put in place to ensure that this does not happen again.

How do you know that they knew it was broken?

I would say you are unusual in a preference for delay, particularly if you were travelling with a small child. I worked for Eurostar for a summer when I was a student and didn't meet a single passenger who took being bumped with any kind of equanimity for any reason up to and including tunnel fires...

And can you guarantee that if they did there weren't announcements that folk should move to an air conditioned carriage instead of staying in the hot one?

OP, I sympathise with you, what a horrible situation for you.

However. No one else had any particular problems with the heat so I would assume a lot of it was to do with your pregnancy. Also, you werent locked in the carriage without air con, you were free to move to a different carriage where it was working.

I'm surprised you didn't have water with you, seeing as it was August and you were pregnant.

You were looked after, they have apologised for what happened and offered you some monetary compensation. What more would you like them to do?

And, whilst I would feel sympathy for anyone who fainted, I wouldn't be particularly impressed to have my own holiday delayed if the air con had broken in one of the carriages and so they closed that carriage, when all that was needed was for people to walk to a carriage where it was working, for half an hour.

Asking for it to be escalated is not the same as escalating it yourself. You don't wait to be given the contact details of someone higher up. You demand them, Google, look at the details on the web site, take to Twitter and get your complaint circulated virally.
Have you done any of that?

There is nothing stopping people from getting out of their cars and walking to a carriage with aircon.

And in any event, did they know in advance that the aircon was broken?

How do you know it was 'at least 40 degrees' in the carriage OP? Did any of the other passengers complain? Were you alone in the car and able to drive off afterwards?

www.eurotunnelgroup.com/uk/eurotunnel-group/operations/le-shuttle/

The reliability of the air-conditioning devices in all train sets was enhanced and the toilet facilities completely renovated.

From the 2014 annual report.

Perhaps they had some teething troubles with it. Shoot them at dawn.

Agree completely with WeirdCatLady

I agree that they should not have used that carriage on a very hot day since the air conditioning wasn't working (assuming they knew that when they were loading the carriage). But having made that decision, there doesn't seem much more they could have done in the circumstances. It sounds a very unpleasant experience but a (thankfully) brief one with no lasting effects on your health.

As an aside, I'm astonished that so many people on this thread have suggested turning on the car's air con!

I am very sympathetic OP as we were in a carriage with no air con on Eurostar last August and it was highly unpleasant, wouldn't like to have been pregnant.

I think the reason you aren't getting either on here or from the company is because you seem to be treating this like a health and safety breach, because you appear to think air con is an absolute necessity and its absence creates a dangerous situation. You are expecting there to be manuals full of flow charts on what to do in the event of air con not working, and you can have an Erin Brockovich moment proving how they put your life at risk by putting you in a hot carriage, even though by your own admission you could have very easily just walked into a cooler one.

Ask anyone who has to take the tube in summer. Yes it is unpleasant and hot, and its even worse when pregnant but they don't suspend the entire network just in case someone faints, so I'm quite baffled that you think this is totally different.

YANBU!

There is a very big difference between experiencing 40 degrees with ventilation at low/normal humidy and 40 degrees underground with no ventilation. Explained Not to mention that you would normally be prepared (clothing, extra water, etc) if you knew you were going to face temperatures like this. Just one of the reasons the Tube invests in so much 'safe travel' advice over the summer months.

As others have said, it would have been illegal to transport livestock in those conditions. It should have been explained before loading you on to give you the opportunity to delay your journey. Someone with a weak heart could have died.

I think unless you can actually articulate what is you want them to do, then you will not get any further. As far as they are concerned, something happened, it was dealt with, they have apologised and offered you recompense as they can't actually change the end result.

I don't disagree with you it must have been a horrible situation, I have been stuck on a bus recently with the heating on and feeling like I will pass out with the heat - and I'm not pregnant! It's horrible. Realistically though, what can they do? I'm sure they have told you they are doing everything in their power to stop this from happening again, but they can't actually stop people from travelling if they have tickets, I'm guessing?

OP have you reported this to the Health and Safety Executive? Presumably you were still in the part of the tunnel under UK jurisdiction? As I see it Eurotunnel have no real incentive at the moment to move speedily or take you particularly seriously - but if you involve an outside authority they might change their thinking on that.

Unless the HSE have a fully functioning time machine, I'm not sure what you think they can do.

Having used the tunnel a lot OP I would want assurance that it doesn't happen again or that people would be told in advance so that they can make a choice

I haven't the faintest idea what they can do. Not the foggiest. Maybe something, maybe nothing. We'll never know until the OP tries will we.

Are people posting here aware of the set up on the Tunnel? You stay sitting in your car. There is no nice passenger carriage with seats in that you can stroll to like a normal train. You can get to the next carriage but you will be standing up on a metal walkway.

I am assuming that the nurse who helped sat the Op in her own car.

And as for those saying put the AC on..... You are not allowed to turn your engine on. For several important reasons.