Welcome to the District of Catastrophe

My intention is not to pile on. There will be plenty of folks better positioned to do that than I. But I have to point out the fundamental weirdness of the recent Washington, D.C. Metro incident involving acrid electrical smoke filling a subway tunnel, an entire train, and the local consciousness.

On Monday, Jan. 12 at around 3:18 p.m. (give or take — officials are not yet supplying detailed information, citing a variety of restrictions and privileges), a Yellow Line train left the L'Enfant Plaza station, heading for Northern Virginia across the Potomac River. Its next stop would have been the Pentagon, a mile or so distant. You may recall that the Pentagon was a 9/11 target, and folks in D.C. like to think that their emergency response resources are now robust and highly practiced.

Almost immediately upon accelerating away from the platform and entering the tunnel, the train encountered heavy smoke. It isn't yet clear who stopped the train — the operator, or Metro's complex automated train operations system. In any event, the train got a little over one-train length (about 800 feet) into the tunnel by the time it halted. The lights went out, and the cars quickly filled with intense, bitter smoke.

Roughly 40 minutes later (at around 4 p.m.), D.C. firefighters finally got to the train and began evacuating passengers back to the L'Enfant Plaza station. By that time, one passenger had died, over 80 people required hospitalization, and the underlying competence of Metro's management and the D.C. Fire Department were once again open to question. In the days since, neither entity has distinguished itself with transparency, honesty, or even basic spin control.

As so often happens, we are left with all sorts of questions. Why did it take so long? Why did the response seem so disorganized and chaotic--at least to the passengers trapped on board the darkened, smoke-filled, stranded subway train? How did the smoke appear so suddenly in the first place? Why couldn't Metro definitively establish the aliveness or deadness of the third rail — and why is everyone so terrified of the third rail in the first place? Did anyone involved display old-fashioned “railroad smarts” and common sense?

This should have been a relatively minor incident: apparently a third rail insulator failed and there was a short but, nasty incident of electrical arcing from the third rail to the ground, which resulted in the production of lots of acrid smoke for a relatively short period of time. These situations are not unknown. In fact, they are rather common on Metro. Safety reports show that Metro had 86 incidents of "smoke and fire" in 2013 and 85 more between January and the end of August 2014.

A more sobering question hangs in the air like the chemical residue still permeating L'Enfant Plaza Station: If the official response to this incident turned out so badly for so many people, what would be the consequences of an even more dire Metro accident or situation?

This drama unfolded at the very heart of the Imperial Capital of the Universe (as it is locally known), on the second-busiest transit system in the nation. The train halted literally under the noses of transit industry regulators, the National Transportation Safety Board, legislators, lobbyists, and what are supposed to be some of the most skilled and prepared first responders on the face of the planet.

I have worked in Washington off-and-on for over 30 years, ridden Metro a thousand times, and clearly recall the seemingly unending disruption its construction entailed. I can say with some experience that riding Metro is, for the most part and for most people, a predictable routine punctuated by intense annoyance.

As you might expect in such a high-profile incident, the “facts” are still in dispute. But this seems to be the consensus reporting. Even the National Transportation Safety Board has weighed in with opinions, a departure from its usually cautious and guarded position.

As the train accelerated away from the L'Enfant Plaza Station, at least one insulator supporting the third rail over a thousand feet farther down the tunnel failed for reasons not yet known. That caused a powerful arc of direct current to run from the steel third rail to ground, a dead short.

The train would have been drawing a substantial amount of current from that third rail. The immense surge of electricity arcing to ground likely acted in unpredictable and self-reinforcing ways. It would have been much like an arc welder, melting and vaporizing anything in the vicinity. Those kinds of arcs can quickly get out of control and feed on themselves, creating substantial quantities of acrid, debilitating, oxygen-poor combustion gasses. If you've ever been around someone arc welding steel, you have a sense of the environment. It can be nasty.

That arcing took place in a tunnel, an obviously constricted space that makes many people uncomfortable to begin with. As the train halted, the smoke filling the tunnel likewise filled the cars.

Everyone involved reported that the cars went dark. Videos from passengers show feeble light from the subway cars' emergency lighting system. Passengers may, or may not, have had light from the lamps on the tunnel walls (a separate circuit from the train power) to navigate their situation.

The train operator apparently repeatedly advised passengers to remain in place and not to attempt to evacuate the train. Apparently his plan was to back the train to the L'Enfant Plaza station platform, but another train either was arriving or was blocking the path.

So: for what must have felt like an excruciatingly long time, several hundred passengers were trapped aboard a darkened, immobile, smoke-filled subway train inside a tunnel. They were not given timely or accurate information had no real idea what was happening or when help might arrive, and were prohibited from taking any steps to save themselves. By the time first responders finally responded, some passengers had begun to panic, and one was dead.

Let me try to connect some dots here, and forgive me if I seem incredulous and outraged.

L'Enfant Plaza Station is Metro's primary system hub. Five of its six lines converge there for passengers to transfer and make connections.

L'Enfant Plaza Station is in the very heart of downtown D.C. From there you can walk to the White House, a dozen major federal agencies, another dozen monuments, the Smithsonian, and if you are willing to hike a bit, D.C. government offices and the Federal Transit Administration. The headquarters of the National Transportation Safety Board are in a nearby office building.

As you might expect, this is a “first responder resource rich” environment. Since 9/11, federal and local entities have spent lavishly on training, technology, response drills, protocols, and preparedness for any eventuality. If the heart of official D.C. is not exquisitely prepared for something as straightforward as smoke in the subway, are any of us safe?

Metro's headquarters, the control point for the entire subway system, is a 15 minute cab ride from the L'Enfant Plaza Station. In a Metro cop car with the lights flashing, it probably is a ten minute ride. D.C. folks are accustomed to pulling over for cars with blue and red lights. The distance is less than 10,000 feet as the crow flies. Metro bosses could have been at the L'Enfant Plaza station at about the same time the fire department got there in force.

So: Why did it take almost 40 minutes for first responders to reach the stranded train and begin to rescue passengers who were 800 feet from relative safety?

Why did one woman die from apparent smoke inhalation, despite the best efforts of fellow passengers to save her?

Why were dozens of passengers hospitalized with serious injuries?

Just what was going down that afternoon, and will anything positive come of it?

Questions are easy. Answers are hard. In D.C., there are always at least three sides to every story. Based on the information available at the moment, these are my questions, answers, and opinions. If they seem harsh, it is because I have some sense of the realities they should have been dealing with.

Did Metro deal with this situation effectively?

Hard to second guess, but the available evidence suggests that Metro was caught flatfooted and unprepared for what should have been at least a foreseeable incident.

As soon as the train ran into the cloud of heavy smoke in the tunnel, why couldn't the operator have communicated with Metro control and backed up the short distance to his previous stop at L'Enfant Plaza Station? Passenger accounts repeatedly mention the operator's seeming inability to establish a clear understanding of the situation with Metro control.

Is the automated Metro operating system so poorly designed and unyielding that it cannot be overridden to allow quick action and common sense responses? Metro uses automatic block signals and relatively short blocks. One would think it possible to stop every train in a given section (they know where every train is), and quickly coordinate a couple of back up moves.

It sounds easy. I know it is hard. But this is supposed to be a technologically advanced system with highly trained operators. Getting a train out of danger ought to be one of the contingencies they rehearse. Instead, it always seems that the slightest perturbation to the system throws sand into the gears. Metro's highly automated system may seem elegant and efficient. But robust and agile it is not.

Why did the train go dark? Did someone, or some event, shut down power to the third rail?

This seems like one of those simple, but important, things that never turn out as expected. Metro is supposed to be a highly technologically advanced system. One would think that it would have had sensors, procedures in place, ways of quickly turning off the juice and even grounding the third rail, especially in critical tunnels like this one.

I know that managing high voltage and heavy current can be as much an art as a science. I know about stray currents and phantom circuits and just how mysterious and vexing a third rail system can be.

This is a tremendously important point because the D.C. first responders would not go into the tunnel until they were assured that power to the third rail was cut. Apparently Metro said that it was, but the fire department didn't at first believe them. An unofficial timeline assembled by the Washington Post (neither Metro nor the D.C. Government are being particularly forthcoming with information) has first responders reaching the L'Enfant Plaza station platform at about 3:30 p.m. —but not getting to the train itself until about 4 p.m.

But that begs another question: Could at least some first responders have safely accessed the stranded train via the raised walkway on the side of the tunnel opposite the third rail?

Metro's own formal instructions for evacuating a subway train describe how passengers should open doors on the side of the car away from the third rail, then follow the raised walkway to the nearest platform. Yes, there seems to be a raised walkway well above, and on the other side of the tunnel, from the covered third rail.

So why didn't some brave soul immediately walk into the tunnel on that raised walkway well away from the third rail and get to the train soonest? Was it blocked? L'Enfant Plaza Station is one of the busiest and most critical stations on the entire system. Could it be that there was no walkway available? That would seem odd.

Is it possible that rules and procedures did not allow either Metro or first responders to use the walkway while the third rail was energized? That seems reasonable given the general ineptitude of both Metro and so much of the D.C. government.

Obviously there is a dilemma: How should Metro balance the risk of trained responders using the raised walkway in the presence of a live third rail against the risks to passengers left alone in a dark, smoke-filled, stranded train not that far away? What, really, would the risks be to first responders (Metro staff or D.C.F.D, or others) if they used the raised walkway even if the third rail was still energized?

In this case, it isn't hard to imagine one or two responders with good flashlights and a couple of oxygen bottles getting to the train within 10 minutes or so and saving that passenger's life. I know live third rails can be dangerous. But they generally stay attached to the trackbed and do not rise up to aggressively threaten people on the tunnel walkway. And if there was not a raised tunnel walkway available at that critical location, then why not?

Did the train controllers at Metro HQ have any real idea what was going on?

As seems to be the case after almost every major incident in D.C., there have been complaints and comments on malfunctioning radios, poor communications, lack of coordination, and the general sense that the situation was out of control. That certainly was the conclusion of most of the passengers interviewed.

Was Metro control's advice to the train operator to keep people on the train based on good, real time information or on rote, outdated protocols? By all accounts, the operator seemed to be trying his damned level best to get those people out of harm's way. At some point, especially if Metro Control was certain that the power was off, it may have made sense to authorize the train operator to help evacuate the train. The instructions are posted in every car.

Based on what we know at the moment —and I realize this is second guessing — it did not seem as though Metro control had an adequate sense of the reality on the ground, or an ability to clearly communicate or make things happen. Emergencies always entail a certain amount of chaos. But this was a reasonably contained incident with only so many variables. The level of chaos seemed disproportionate to the severity of the incident.

Why did it take one of the most highly trained and qualified fire departments in the Western Hemisphere over 30 minutes — half an hour--to even begin to get passengers out of a stalled, smoke-filled subway train a little over one train length inside a tunnel?

Did a woman die because Metro couldn't decide whether the third rail was live or not? Or does inordinate fear of a third rail now trump common sense and a little courage?

I am deeply aware of the risks of second-guessing and the hard realities of responding in real time to life and death situations. My intent is not to poke at Metro or merely point out perceived shortcomings in what must have been a harrowing situation.

But at the same time, it is hard not to feel outrage and frustration. There seem to be so many alternative decisions or ways this incident could have been handled differently. It seemed so similar, but on a more tragic scale, to so many of the small insults and fumbles that characterize Metro's day-to-day activities. In the aftermath, Metro has continued to disappoint and behave like the obtuse and obstructionist bureaucracy it has become.

These folks are trained and paid to think clearly and act decisively. Apparently, one, the other, or both were in scant supply that awful Monday afternoon. It might be time to cast a bright light into Metro's dark and smoky corners.