After an agonising wait, the delays that have affected some 30,000 passengers utilising the Eurostar Channel Tunnel should finally be over today. However, the company has acknowledged that thousands of people are unlikely to make it home in time for Christmas.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has demanded that services are operational by Tuesday, having ordered French rail head Guillaume Pepy to get traffic moving again and to install measures to prevent similar incidents occurring again. Traffic has been suspended between London and Paris as Eurostar undertakes testing to determine the cause of five tunnel breakdowns on Friday evening, leaving some 2,000 passengers stranded for hours.

Management of the carrier are facing a barrage of criticism on both sides of the channel, with the respective British and French governments carpeting Eurostar. Sarkozy’s demands came as the British authorities demanded engineer’s reports on the failures rather than any press statement from the company. Some senior management are expected to lose their jobs following the declaration by Dominique de Bussereau, the French transport minister, that the failures were ‘unacceptable’

In London, passengers vented their fury at Eurostar CEO Richard Brown as he addressed media at St Pancras International Station where normally bustling platforms lay empty. Further chaos ensued at the Eurotunnel entrance in Folkestone as people were turned away due to the lack of space.

Hopes are that around 27,000 passengers can be transported today, around half of a usual daily number. Unfortunately, the four day backlog means well over 100,000 reserved bookings still remain stranded.