TWISTED TRIP: British family’s ‘holiday hell’ in tornado-struck Spanish resort

A BRITISH family has spoken about their challenging experience while holidaying on tornado-hit Menorca.
British father Tom Hopkins was on the Balearic island with his partner and three-year-old son when a waterspout vortex stuck the resort.
The adverse weather conditions cut off power to the holiday resort Mr Hopkins and his family were staying at, plunging their hotel into darkness.
Mr Hopkins claims his family were forced to use ‘stone cold’ water while caring for his infant son with his partner.
Storms on the Balearic island left almost 40,000 locals without electricity for two days while replacement generators were delivered.
The waterspout vortex travelled inland last weekend damaging 50 trees and rendering hundreds of power lines useless.
As their Menorca hotel acted to evacuate holidaymakers, Mr Hopkins said his family were bundled into an emergency plane at half an hour’s notice on Monday night, only to be flown to Manchester airport, a destination six-hours away from their London residence.
Mr Hopkins claims he was forced to travel a further 13 hours with his family on a coach to return home.
Travel company TUI made emergency arrangements to evacuate the resort and sent notices to all affected guests apologising for the impact of the storm.
The TUI notice outlined that attempts were made to find ‘alternative accommodation’ on the island.
However, the travel company conceded this was not possible for all guests and so the decision was made for an ‘additional aircraft’ to be sourced.
TUI claim that ‘all other avenues’ were exhausted before the decision to fly holidaymakers back to the UK was taken.
TUI promised to give all evacuated guests a ‘pro-rata refund of two nights’ as well as gifting the affected holidaymakers a £100 holiday voucher as a ‘gesture of goodwill’.
However, due to space problems on the ‘additional aircraft’, Mr. Hopkins and his family claim they were forced to leave their large suitcases behind in Menorca.
The family claim that it will be two weeks before their belongings are delivered to the in the UK.
 

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