A mother has been trapped in Dover harbor with her children for more than 12 hours as authorities declared a “critical incident” on the first night of the Easter holiday. At 9 p.m. on Friday evenings, queues to board ferries across the English channel had already reached seven hours, according to DFDS Seaways, and the situation has become more drastic overnight, with more than 70 coaches full of holidaymakers waiting to be processed in the early hours of Saturday morning.
A geography teacher posted on Twitter at 6:23 am on Saturday morning that she was “still in the port of Dover”.
She said she “left school at 4 p.m.” with her children, but struggled to get past the hordes of traffic, which seemed to have built up overnight.
The delays are believed to have been caused by an overwhelm of the system as thousands flocked to Dover on the first night of the two-week Easter school break.
The bad weather and the “extensive processing at border controls” on the French side of the Channel have also significantly increased waiting times.
P&O Ferries tweeted that it is providing refreshments to coach passengers waiting at the cruise terminal.
Hundreds of passengers have queued all night as the buses appear to be the hardest hit.
The ferry company added that it was working to get food and drink for passengers waiting in the buffer zone at the entrance to the port.
“We apologize for the waiting times and we made extra speed tonight to clear the backlog,” the operator said on Friday evening.
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The port added: “We apologize for any inconvenience these delays may have caused to passenger travel and we thank all port users for their patience at this time.”
Both DFDS Seaways and P&O Ferries regularly update their Twitter with the latest news on traffic delays during Friday.
What started as a two-hour wait just after 11 a.m. quickly turned into four to five hours, with a seven-hour delay announced at 9 p.m.