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DC Metro Closes For Emergency Safety Inspection (nbcwashington.com)

Posted by timothy on from the so-effective-you-can-skip-a-day dept.

McGruber writes with NBC's report that Washington, DC's Metrorail system has been completely shut down for at least 29 hours, so crews can check 600 underground jumper cables: A problem with those jumper cables caused a fire at the McPherson Square station early Monday and was also the cause of a fatal smoke incident in January, 2015, that killed one person and injured others. The safety checks could have been delayed until the weekend or conducted at night over about six days, officials said. But if the system were kept open, a public announcement about the risk would have to be made. That would have put passengers, and Metro, in the awkward position of publicly acknowledging that it was operating despite being aware of a potentially deadly safety problem. Metro also would have been liable in the case of any crashes or calamities. The shutdown prompted the Washington Post to publish an editorial titled It's official: Metro is a national embarrassment."

2 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Why wait over a year? by timrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the first deadly accident with these jumper cables happened in January of last year, why did they wait so long to close down to inspect?

  2. DC is the embarrassment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or rather, the culture that allowed this to happen.

    Last January, an electrical fire caused by problems in feeder wires that provide power to the rails killed someone. The NTSB ordered DC Metro to inspect ALL such feeder wires.

    Last Monday, another electrical fire was caused by a problem in feeder wires - wires that were apparently "inspected" and "passed" just a few months ago.

    In other words, the previous inspections were falsified. In US Navy parlance, they were "gundecked".

    My guess is a few mid-level managers and quite a bit of workers who did the earlier "inspections" are about to be fired - after EVERYONE spends 24 hours not getting paid overtime fixing the problems they previously worked hard to hide.

    FWIW, the new director of DC Metro - Paul Wiedefeld - came from running BWI airport, which he once shut down for an entire day due to a crappy safety record.