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Four thousand subway passengers had to be evacuated from subway cars when a track fire on the B/D lines disrupted service during the evening rush hour. And many of the passengers were stuck on the Manhattan Bridge, clueless as the MTA waited 20 minutes before explaining what had happened and sweltering as train cars lost air-conditioning. When we watched news coverage, passengers were glad to be out and noted that fellow straphangers were helping each other, but they roundly criticized the MTA for not saying anything while keeping them stalled. People were treated for smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion, but luckily there were no serious injuries. We liked the Daily News' mention of one woman who called her husband to say she was stuck on the D, only to have her husband say. "I'm on the train, too!"
Since a B train was stopped because of the fire, part of its cars were in the tunnel while the others were on the bridge. A D train right behind it was stuck on the Manhattan Bridge. The crazy thing is how firefighters helped subway passengers out: Using ladders and boards, the passengers climbed from the train cars to the bridge (traffic lanes were closed) and walked home. The NY Times had a subway pee story, with a man excushing himself to pee in the back of the car while the car was being evacuated: “It was the most civilized public urination I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said.
The incident stopped service on the B/D/F/V/Q lines (well, some of it was rerouted - we know the B was running on the F part of the evening). And the fire was between the subway's tunnel and the DeKalb station. A "burning wood track tie" was found near a homeless encampment, though authorities do not know if foul play was involved. Subway service is back to normal - so they say.
Were you stuck on the trains? Did you manage to get out okay? It sounds like the FDNY did a good job in getting everyone out while the MTA could work on techniques to keep its riders in the loop. And Razor Apple has some great shots, including the one above, of the scene at the Manhattan Bridge.
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How many more fires started by homeless people will be started before they are actually kicked out of the tunnels…and what does this say about the ability to stop terrorists?
Bring back Guiliani, homeless people are all over our streets again and sleeping on/stinking up subway cars.
What does a "man excushing himself to pee" mean? I don't get it.
I was on the back half of the B train last night, the part that wasn't yet in the tunnel, so there was no smoke on my car. the whole thing was handled okay, but the worst part was the 20 minutes with no announcement (when they finally said something, they stated "everyone who is in a car with smoke, proceed to the back of the train", which led all of us in the back to wonder what was really going on).
Took about one hour to get off the train itself and onto teh middle roadway of the bridge.
Definitely did not see the man peeing out of the back of the train, however...
That homeless thing is a fabrication.
You don't see wooden railroad ties on the Manhattan bridge. And, it would take a blow torch to get one on fire.
When MTA f's up, blame the homeless like that signal box fire in lower manhattan affecting the A train.
Standard procedure in their playbook.
fa fa foohay, too too toothey.
Moron,
The fire was at the entrance to/in the tunnel.
why would a homeless person sleep at an entrance to a tunnel? stop blaming on the homeless.
signed, fred from mars. (i'm also homeless, i'm from mars and the only way I can get a wife is through a radio show just like ta ta toothey)
What time did this happen? I took the D home yesterday; we went over the bridge around 6 and there were no problems at all. That sucks for all those people that got caught up in the delay.
Four Thousand people evacuated. Or, in Roman Numerals, 60.
This morning, I read in the AP piece in Metro, that it was only 60, and I can honestly tell you, that in the second to last car of the B train that this all happened to last night, there were far more than 60 people crammed in there!
the b train first stopped on the tracks of the bridge, half in the Brooklyn tunnel, at 6:10pm.
they made no announcements until at least 6:25pm.
Surprise, surprise, the MTA did a bad job informing people what was going on! I feel like we're all much too willing to overlook the MTA's constant piss-poor performance in the area of communicating vital information to passengers, in emergency and non-emergency situations alike. Having to guess where a train will take you, or when it will get around to doing that, has become part of the subway experience.
I was on the downtown F at around 34th St about 6:20 when we started getting announcements about "debris on tracks" and no B/D service over the bridge. And then we sat in the tunnels for an extra long time between stations. Sounds like we got info around the same time as those stuck on the bridge--they should've known much much earlier.
It becomes more and more evident that the MTA is sooooooo not prepared for any kind of minor emergency. How on earth are they going to handle something major, heaven forbid? It's really shameful that a public agency is so poorly equipped to serve its public.
The 34th St station @ 6:30 was chaos. No announcements, massive crowds going from the B/D platforms to the Q [which was choked solid for a while], B trains pulling in and then backing out.
On the Q platform, finally there were some announcements about an "incident" causing train rerouting - but even that makes the mind reel with possible "incidents" they could be talking about.
MTA = Mass Transit Amateurs.
15-20 minutes to make an announcement actually sounds pretty quick for the MTA considering sometimes it takes them 10 minutes to announce we're stopped due to a "red signal" or "train ahead of us".
-J$
http://velvet-sea.blogspot.com
I was in the third car of the D train. I thought the MTA employees were fine about passing on info, and the evacuation of my train was very organized. MTA employees and cops came through first to escort anyone with breathing issues, disabilities or young children out, then we went.
We did sit for 20 minutes before we got word on what the problem was, but we had information long before the air conditioning stopped. (I would guess 45 minutes to an hour after we initially got stuck.) We were told there was a smoke condition in the tunnel ahead, and then that power had been cut to the third rail so that firemen could access the tracks. Maybe things were much worse on the B train, but I really couldn't complain about how things were handled.
I was on the second car of the D train, and the 3-4k number is accurate. There was no smoke on our train so at first we didn't know why we were stopped. About 20 minutes after stopping they announced that because of a "smoke condition" at dekalb ave. we had a red signal. At that point we still had power on the third rail.
The next thing we heard, perhaps 10-20 minutes after that, was that we'd be wrong tracked back to grand street. Not 5 minutes after that it was apparent they'd killed the third rail power (ac went off) and perhaps 5 minutes after that we got the "well we're not going anywhere there is no third rail."
I don't really think the announcements could have come any quicker. Perhaps the engineer could have said "there appears to be a B train on fire in front of us" but I'm sure that would have caused a lot more panic than not saying anything at all.
Once the evacuation got underway, which was only after the B train had been cleared, the police and the vast majority of the passengers were calm. Pregnant woman, people with disabilities, etc. were taken out first, and then everyone else calmly filed out. As a straping young man I got picked to jump out the front door and walk down the tracks a bit to a hole the police had cut in the fence but by "jump" I mean sit down on the front of the train and be lifted by a cop.
After I got off the train and onto the bridge and could see the massive number of firetrucks and emergency vehicles, most had come from the Brooklyn side of the bridge so the few that we could see going by from the train belied the seriousness of the situation, the wait on the train seemed minimal in comparison.
Hey, I know! Let's partially Automate the Train and only have one MTA Employee!!
(ahem)
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Way to fill up spaces C.H.U.D.