Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Nearly 16 months after a smoke-filled Metro train killed one person and injured 90 others, the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday will release a probable cause of the incident and a long list of recommendations to avoid similar situations from taking place again.
It’s expected WMATA will not be the only target of the NTSB’s to-do list. In preliminary reports, the board not only blamed a slow response from WMATA, but problems in communication among first responders and city agencies.
The NTSB has indicated it took 35 minutes after the Yellow Line train first stopped in a smoky tunnel to start evacuating the train. The smoke was originally caused by some type of electrical malfunction along the third rail, the NTSB has said. Following that, there was a series of misjudgments and miscommunications. Rail operations workers initially ignored a smoke alarm and allowed the train to proceed. Fans designed to blow smoke out of the tunnel instead blew it farther in. First responders, lacking a unified command, were given incomplete information. Dead zones were discovered where radio communication was cut off.
Metro’s safety problems have not gone away since then, among them a derailment, more electrical malfunctions, and frayed jumper cables that caused an unprecedented day-long shutdown of the system last March. In doing a “safety blitz” of inspections in recent weeks, the Federal Transit Administration said they found further problems that WMATA missed in their inspections, including faulty track ties.
Metro took a step to allay any more communications problems on Monday, announcing the staffing of a 24/7 “Fire Liaison” to deal with any emergency situations in the future.
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