DC metro trains collide, killing 4 and wounding 70

[Goldeneye]

Jun 22, 7:34 PM (ET)

By BRETT ZONGKER

WASHINGTON (AP) - One Metro transit train smashed into the rear of another at the height of Washington's Monday evening rush hour, killing at least four people and injuring scores of others as cars of the trailing train jackknifed into the air and fell atop the first.

District of Columbia fire spokesman Alan Etter said crews were cutting apart the trains to get people out in what he described as a "mass casualty event." Rescue workers propped steel ladders up to the upper train cars to help survivors escape. Seats from the smashed cars had spilled out onto the track.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said four were dead and many more hurt. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin said rescue workers had treated 70 people at the scene and sent some of them to local hospitals, two with life-threatening injuries. A Metro official the dead included the female operator of the trailing train. Her name was not immediately released.

The crash around 5 p.m. EDT took place on the system's red line, Metro's busiest, which runs below ground for much of its length but is at ground level at the site near the Maryland border.

Metro chief John Cato said the first train was stopped on the tracks, waiting for another to clear the station ahead, when the trailing train plowed into it from behind. Officials had no explanation for the accident.

Passenger Jodie Wickett, a nurse, told CNN she was seated on one train, sending text messages on her phone, when she felt the impact. She said she texted someone that it felt like the train had hit a bump.

"From that point on, it happened so fast, I flew out of the seat and hit my head." Wickett said she stayed at the scene and tried to help. She said "people are just in very bad shape."

"The people that were hurt, the ones that could speak, were calling back as we called out to them," she said. "Lots of people were upset and crying, but there were no screams."

One man said he was riding a bicycle across a bridge over the Metro tracks when the sound of the collision got his attention.

"I didn't see any panic," Barry Student said. "The whole situation was so surreal."

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said less than two hours after the crash that federal authorities had no indication of any terrorism connection.

Metro general manager John Catoe said at least 60 people had been taken off the trains.

"I don't know the reason for this accident," he said. "I would still say the system is safe, but we've had an incident."

The only other time in Metrorail's 33-year history that there were customer fatalities was in January 1982, when three people died as a result of a derailment between the Federal Triangle and Smithsonian Metro stations underneath downtown.

[Blowfeld]

Tragic...... Simply tragic. I read that 6 have now succumb to their injuries.

[Goldeneye]

Jun 23, 8:54 AM (ET)

By BRIAN WITTE

WASHINGTON (AP) - The subway train that plowed into another, causing a crash that killed seven and injured scores of others in the nation's capital, was part of an aging fleet that federal officials had sought to phase out due to safety concerns, an investigator said Tuesday.

But the Metrorail transit system "was not able to do what we asked them to do," and the old trains kept running despite the 2006 warnings, said Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The rush-hour crashed sent more than 70 people to area hospitals and killed at least seven people. The three-decades-old Metro system, a pride of the District of Colombia tourism industry, shuttles tourists and local commuters from Washington to Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Tuesday that seven had died in the crash. Earlier, the District of Columbia Fire Department Web site announced that three bodies had been found in addition to the six fatalities reported Monday.

Fenty said two victims were hospitalized in critical condition.

Hersman said investigators expect to recover recorders from the train was struck, providing valuable information that might help determine why the crash occurred. But the train triggered the collision was part of an old "thousand-series" fleet that was not equipped with the devices, she said at a news conference.

Earlier, Hersman told The Associated Press that the NTSB had warned in 2006 that there were safety problems related to trains rolling back on their tracks.

"When the train rolled back, the operator was not able to stop it," she said. Hersman said the NTSB recommended that the thousand-series fleet be phased out or retrofitted to make them more crashworthy.

Neither was done, she said, adding that the NTSB considered the lack of action "unacceptable."

Monday's crash was the worst in the history of Metrorail, which has shuttled tourists and federal workers to and from the nation's capital for more than three decades.

Maya Maroto recalls hearing the sound of "metal on metal" as the train she was riding rear-ended the other one.

"We were going full speed - I didn't hear any breaking. Everything was just going normally. Then there was a very loud impact. We all fell out of our seats. Then the train filled up with smoke. I was coughing," the 31-year-old said. "It sounded like metal on metal. It felt like we hit a car. I couldn't imagine it was another train."

Maroto, of Burtonsville, Md., said there was confusion after the impact because no announcements were made immediately. She said some passengers wanted to climb out, but others were afraid of the electrified third rail.

Tijuana Cox, 21, was in the train that was hit. She had her arm in a sling Tuesday, saying she sprained it in the accident.

"Everybody just went forward and came back," with people's knees hitting the backs of the seats in front of them, said Cox, of Lanham, Md.

The only other fatal crash in the Metro subway system occurred on Jan. 13, 1982, when three people died as a result of a derailment beneath downtown. That was a day of disaster in the capital: Shortly before the subway crash, an Air Florida plane slammed into the 14th Street Bridge immediately after takeoff from Washington National Airport across the Potomac River. The plane crash, during a severe snowstorm, killed 78 people.

In January 2007, a subway train derailed in downtown Washington, sending 20 people to the hospital and prompting the rescue of 60 others from the tunnel. In November 2006, two Metro track workers were struck and killed by an out-of-service train. An investigation found that the train operator failed to follow safety procedures. Another Metro worker was struck and killed in May 2006.

[Kristatos]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The subway train that plowed into another, causing a crash that killed seven and injured scores of others in the nation's capital, was part of an aging fleet that federal officials had sought to phase out due to safety concerns, an investigator said Tuesday.

But the Metrorail transit system "was not able to do what we asked them to do," and the old trains kept running despite the 2006 warnings, said Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Such a shame that six people had to die before the message got through to whoever makes those decisions.