Travellers stuck in Thalys for hours at 40 degrees smashed windows

Several hundred people were trapped for hours last night on a Thalys train from Paris to Amsterdam. Because the air conditioning had failed, the temperature in the wagons rose quickly. Passengers were only able to continue their journey the next morning. Thalys said in a response that the affected travellers will receive “exceptional commercial compensation”.

Five minutes after leaving Paris, where it was 40 degrees Tuesday, the Thalys came to a stop at the station of the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. During the delay, the air conditioning failed and people were not allowed to open the doors for safety reasons, says Belgian passenger Tom van Heymbeeck.

“In the end, we spent 3.5 hours in a train without air conditioning“, he looks back. “After an hour, all the drinks that were present in the train had been used up. From then on, it was every man for himself, so to speak. Some people started smashing windows.”

The video in the tweet below shows that the train door closes automatically after travellers had opened it. Then the passengers smash the door window:

From the platform of Saint-Denis station, people tried to throw bottles of water through the broken windows. “We saw that station and the people there,” says Van Heymbeeck. “And we were there, in that train where it was more than 40 degrees. Then people started throwing water.”

That can be seen in these images:

In the end, the passengers were evacuated around 23:00 from the train which had departed Paris shortly after 18:40. Because at that time no more trains were scheduled in the direction of Brussels and Amsterdam, travellers had to spend the night in a sleeper train at Paris Nord.

The passengers were told that they could board the first Thalys early this morning.

Compensation

Thalys said that the affected passengers will receive “exceptional commercial compensation” and apologised for the “exceptional situation“.

The compensation consists of a Thalys voucher worth 250 percent of the ticket price. These vouchers are valid for one year. If travellers prefer not to travel by train again, they can have their entire ticket amount refunded to their bank account.

The situation arose yesterday due to a material problem due to the heat, a spokesman said. According to him, several attempts were made to restart the train, but that did not work. As a result, it was eventually decided that all travellers should be evacuated.

The Thalys spokesperson also states that the air conditioning was not constantly out of action. According to him, the train has been standing still for more than three hours, half of the time the air conditioning would still have worked.

Source: NOS