Two Dead, Many Injured in Red Line Collision
A collision between two Metro trains on the Red Line betweenTakoma and Fort Totten has left two people dead and many seriously injured, according to preliminary reports.
Here's a link to a Twitter picture, a screen shot from Channel 9. It shows one train car resting on top of another. Rescue workers are struggling to get injured passengers off the trains.
D.C. Fire/EMS spokesman Alan Etter said: "We have a number of injuries ... And we have dozens of injuries. The fire department is still in the process of extricating people from the cars. We're using heavy rescue equipment to cut open the cars to get whoever's trapped in there out."
Many details about the accident are unclear. First reports said there one train derailed before the other train collided with it, but that may not have been the case. There are many safety systems designed to prevent such a collision.
"There will obviously be a very thorough investigation into what caused this derailment," said Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein. She said passengers were being taken to hospitals."Our hearts are with the families of those who have passed," she said.
Avoid the Red Line. It is Metro's busiest, and this will cause a large and long backup at the height of rush hour.Trains are operating between Glenmont and Silver Spring and between Shady Grove and Rhode Island Avenue. Metro says that shuttle bus service has been requested to bridge the gap between Silver Spring and Rhode Island Avenue, but any bus bridge is quickly overwhelmed by the passengers from just a couple of trains.
Metrobuses up 16th Street and up Georgia Avenue can get people to Silver Spring.
MARC is arranging a bus bridge beginning at Rockville. Commuters in Washington and Silver Spring are advised to take Metro to Shady Grove. Commuters south of Germantown are advised to make alternative travel with local area buses.
The Green Line is operating to Geenbelt, but is extra crowded.
Casey Anderson, a Red Line rider bound for Silver Spring, said his train had been stopped near New York Avenue. Passengers were receiving little information. The train went up to Rhode Island Avenue Station, where passengers got off. "So far, they're just off loading the trains," Anderson said.
He's getting on an inbound train back to Union Station, where he's going to try to find a cab, or perhaps get his bike, for the trip home.
By Robert Thomson | June 22, 2009; 6:34 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (48)
Tags: Metro
accident, delays, train accident Share This:
E-Mail | Technorati |
Del.icio.us |
Digg | Stumble
At Least 1 Dead, 9 Hurt in Metro Crash: Report
A Metro representative has just told ABC-7 television that one person died and at least one was injured in the collision near Fort Totten. CNN has also reported the death.
If you were on this train, or know someone who was, e-mail us.
By Washington Post Editors | June 22, 2009; 5:33 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (4)
Share This:
E-Mail | Technorati |
Del.icio.us |
Digg | Stumble
History of Metro Train Collisions
Today's accident is at least the third collision between Metro trains to result in casualties in the past 15 years.
The most recent collision occurred in
November 2004 when an empty train between the Cleveland Park and Woodley Park stations slid backward down a steep grade and into a train at the Woodley Park
station at about 30 miles per hour, sending 20 people to the hospital. The driver of the second train was credited with beginning a rapid evacuation of the
train before the collision.
As in today's crash, one train wound up on top of the other.
See photos of the aftermath of that collision here.
National Transportation Safety Board
investigators found after that accident that operators were ill-informed about what to do if their train began rolling backward too quickly, and
that many were under the impression that all Metro trains had computerized systems that would prevent such accidents.
The other crash happened in January 1996, and also involved overreliance on Metro trains' computer systems. In that case, a train operator was killed and two passengers were injured when their train's computerized brakes failed and it slid through the Shady Grove station during a blizzard and collided with an out-of-service train.
The train was moving at 75 mph at the time of the crash and had already slid through two stations, but at the time, Metro operators were not permitted to manual control braking during bad weather.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/getthere/?hpid=topnews

