I survived 6 hours underground

 ET-6hours

On Tuesday we had a shoot with Eurotunnel. The day was a long one. It was the fourth day of shooting or a project that has been 18 months in the making. This shoot was mostly about picking up shots that hadn’t worked or that we’d missed. Because of this it was a bit of a stressful day. However I had my brother Tom ans one of my camera men and Mr Dan as my other camera ma so it was nice and easy. The shoot itself went very well and we got everything we needed.

At the end of the day we finished up our last shots in France and boarded a train to come back to the UK with the intention of getting two final simple shots. These shots were destined to never be shot……

About 20 minutes in to the 35 minute journey the train came to a bit of an abrupt stop in the middle of the tunnel. Shortly after this an announcement was made to the affect of some sort of Technical fault. This was the beginning of the 6 hour wait we had to endure. Now i must say that while to was a very unpleasant experience it is nowhere near as bad as how the Daily M.A.I.L. (Mal-Adjusted Information System) article displays it. In fact that article is just another example of how BAD a newspaper they are. The article is stupidly misleading its funny.

The facts are this. Announcements were made when they had new information. They simply couldn’t figure out what the issue was. The staff (including our client) started distributing water because the air-con was not working which the DID NOT run out of.  Soon we were told that It was to do with a power failure. When the fire crews arrived they toyed with he idea of evacuating the train – This is a last resort due to safety. During this time the lights went out a few times for only a few minutes at a time. Eventually we were towed out quite quickly by a diesel train – it was just 6 hours later.

It was no a TERROR incident as the mail suggests. If anything it was a terrifyingly DULL experience. It did get quite warm down there but 30 degrees C is not over kill. You need to be a total wuss to think that is treacherous.

I think the ET staff did very well under the circumstances. If anything they could have been better with communicating what was happening but half of me thinks that they told us all there was to tell. Maybe they could have reassured the punters a little more. Saying that the staff did make their presence felt as much as was humanly possible. They walked up through the wagons giving as much info as they had.

It was an experience I’d not like to go through again but it could have been a lot worse! Needless to say – we didn’t get those final shots….

L´eurotunnel...