DC area lawmakers to discuss fatal Metro incident

Lawmakers who represent districts in the metropolitan Washington area on Wednesday are planning to discuss a smoke incident on the region’s Metrorail subway last week that left one passenger dead and more than 80 others injured after they receive a briefing from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). 

The accident investigation agency is scheduled to brief Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), along with Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), John Sarbanes (D-Md.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), John Delaney (D-Md.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), and Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) on the deadly incident on Metro’s Yellow Line. 

Investigators have said the Yellow Line train was heading toward Northern Virginia on Jan. 12 when an electrical issue halted its progress, trapping passengers underground in smoke-filled cars.

{mosads}The incident resulted in Metro’s first passenger fatality since a high-profile crash on the Red Line in 2009 that killed nine people and led to widespread changes at the capital-area transit agency.

Lawmakers began pressing the agency for answers before the NTSB began its investigation last week. 

“For those who use the Metro system on a daily basis, [last Monday’s] tragic events represent a nightmare situation in which passengers were left in the dark, breathing potentially toxic smoke and fumes, for close to one hour before first responders allowed an evacuation,” Warner wrote in a letter to former Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Chairman Richard Sarles, who retired at the end of last week in an exit that was planned long before the Yellow Line incident. 

“While the incident currently is under investigation by a team from the National Transportation Safety Board, the circumstances reported by dozens of passengers and witnesses are disturbing,” Warner continued. “I understand that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is now beginning a thorough and comprehensive investigation of yesterday’s incident which limits your ability to discuss the events in detail. However, general training and coordination procedures are clearly at issue here, and I therefore request a full briefing as soon as possible.”

NTSB officials have attributed the smoke in Metro’s Yellow Line tunnel to an  “electrical arcing incident” that occurred near the agency’s L’Enfant Plaza station, which is a major transfer station that is located near the NTSB’s Washington headquarters.

“On January 12, 2015, about 3:15 p.m. eastern standard time, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Metrorail train 302 stopped after encountering an accumulation of heavy smoke while traveling southbound in a tunnel between the L’Enfant Plaza Station and the Potomac River Bridge,” the agency said in its preliminary report. 

“NTSB investigators have inspected the area of the incident, where they observed severe electrical arcing damage to the third rail and electrical cables about 1,100 feet ahead of train 302,” the report continued. “Recorded data shows that at about 3:06 p.m., an electrical breaker at one end of a section of third rail tripped (opened). At about 3:16 p.m. the WMATA Operations Control Center (OCC) began activating ventilation fans in an effort to exhaust smoke from the area. The electrical breaker at the other end of the third rail section remained closed; supplying power until the WMATA OCC remotely sent a command to open the breaker at about 3:50 p.m.” 

Metro and Washington, D.C. officials have been criticized for allowing such a long gap before emergency responders could reach passengers who were stuck on the smoke-filled train. 

The NTSB’s full preliminary report can be read here.