Chilled despite her hat and gloves, Romane Berti, 26, is "uncertain" and does not know when she will be able to join her friends on Erasmus in Frankfurt.

"We can say that we were well informed, I received an SMS from the SNCF when I woke up which told me that I was late by one hour," she told AFP.

The SNCF, which had initially counted on a resumption of train traffic at 10 a.m., finally announced that it would be interrupted "for the whole day, until the end of service" due to the consequences of a fire. volunteer in a signal post.

“It is an inadmissible act of vandalism”, denounced Anne-Marie Palmier, director Ile-de-France production zone of SNCF Réseau during a press briefing held in the middle of the morning in the hall of the station. 'Est, stating that "48 cables, located in gutters which were opened, were burned".

"The cables make it possible to give information to the signal boxes, so safety is no longer guaranteed," she added, adding that the company had filed a complaint.

In Vaires-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne), "around 3:00 a.m., a cage containing the electrical wiring of the SNCF traffic signs was opened and set on fire. An SNCF agent called the police towards 4:30 a.m.,” a police source told AFP.

"A dozen SNCF Réseau agents are working to repair as quickly as possible," said a spokeswoman, who did not give details on the number of trains to run on Tuesday.

- "Sanction these acts of malevolence"

A few TGVs have been diverted to the Gare du Nord, very close to the Gare de l'Est, where some 41 million travelers pass each year according to figures dating from 2019.

"We have set up passenger information on all of our sites, red vests" - volunteers responsible for guiding travelers - "have been deployed. Travelers who had a reservation have been informed," said Christophe Fanichet, CEO of SNCF Voyageurs.

In the hall of the Gare de l'Est, the travelers present calmly consult the display panels and listen to the announcements from the loudspeakers.

Ayman Bouzidi, a 28-year-old business lawyer, had to take a train to "return to Luxembourg" where he lives and works "after coming to see [his] parents in France. I will wait another thirty minutes, I hope have a train at Gare du Nord to return to Luxembourg," he told AFP.

For her part, Bouchra Ayguel, controller and skipper on TER, underlines: "We don't have all the information so it's difficult, but we try to be present. We try to do our best to tell people to postpone their trips, and we tell them that they can get reimbursed".

The Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, for his part said "to regret the impact for many people who take transport this morning", at the microphone of FranceInfo.

"Unfortunately we regularly have malicious acts on the cables, on the tracks to take a little material that has a little value, so these acts must obviously be severely punished because we see the impacts they have on daily life,” he added.

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© 2023 AFP