After Orange Line meltdown, agency says it’s prepared
Metro officials acknowledged Thursday that they do not have detailed emergency plans for all 86 rail stations as they reviewed a meltdown on the Orange Line earlier this month when a man attempted suicide during the evening rush.
“Obviously, we can’t do that for every station,” Metro General Manager Richard Sarles told board members.
But the agency says that doesn’t mean it is unprepared for emergencies and disruptions. It provides local officials with detailed emergency maps for every station that explain general procedures for how to evacuate tunnels and trains. It says it has trained some 4,000 local emergency responders. All Metro employees from secretaries to executives also undergo at least basic training to help during an emergency.
And having a set plan for every possible catastrophe tailored to each station doesn’t make sense, Metro officials said. “It depends on when, where and what the hazard is,” Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said.
But Metro officials caution that riders should expect to wait when problems occur, especially during rush hour periods. “I don’t want folks to have unrealistic expectations,” Metro emergency management operations manager Ronald Bodmer told reporters. “We’re going to get people out safely.”
And wait they did on Oct. 11. Many riders reported that it took them two or more hours extra to get home. It also frightened them, board member Mary Hynes said.
The issues began when a 39-year-old McLean man intentionally walked onto the tracks at Clarendon just before 5 p.m. A fully loaded eight-car train struck him before it could reach the platform, trapping all the riders for more than an hour. The man died a week later, but emergency medical crews shut down power to both tracks to rescue him.
Crowds started to back up at other stations. Rosslyn became so packed that the weight of riders shut down the escalators. That, in turn, packed the station, forcing Metro to briefly close it.
Metro rerouted 17 Orange Line trains to Arlington National Cemetery on the Blue Line. The agency also dispatched 40 buses and Arlington added five more to shuttle the riders. But Metro says most people didn’t know about them; only an estimated 12 percent used them. And there was confusion about where the buses were going.
Metro officials said they learned some lessons on how to communicate with riders and officials. They said the station and train announcements were “sufficient” and “frequent.” But the problem was communicating to people before they got stuck in the system. In a post-incident survey, 85 percent of riders told Metro they would have done something different had they known of the problems.
Sarles said riders should steer clear of trouble spots during such incidents.
“I’ve been a commuter for 40 years,” he said. “And I learned a long time ago, if there’s an incident, don’t go down to the station.”
Metro has 74,000 subscribers to its e-alerts system that notifies riders of disruptions. It also said it sent out 44 tweets on Twitter.
But board member Muriel Bowser, a D.C. councilwoman, urged Metro to have a spokesman on scene because not everyone is on Twitter or receives e-alerts. “The other segment of the population was watching it at home in horror,” she said.
