Subway Riders In DC Trapped By Smoky Fire, One Dies

Seconds From Disaster King’s Cross Fire – YouTube that killed nearly 40 people in London riding the subway, using faulty stairs.  The smoke killed most.

One commuter dead, two critical and 65 hospitalized in DC Metro fire: Thick smoke engulfs station as hundreds are evacuated.  The passengers were stranded in the tunnel with no electricity as the fire filled the carriages with deadly smoke.  People banged on the doors which were deliberately kept shut ‘to keep out the smoke’ even though it didn’t.

Fortunately for most, there was no flash fire in the tunnel or hundreds would have died.  Also lucky, it wasn’t rush hour.  Some people managed to force a door open to escape down the tunnel. This is a complete mishandling of a dangerous situation.  The staff on the train should have evacuated the passengers, not trapped them inside the smoke event.

What shocks me is I learned this news in London news, not US news.  Only the Washington Post has it as a front page story.  The NYT doesn’t have it at all.  CNN has it as a back page story, not front page!

I have noticed this for several years.  People in agony or dying due to ice, snow and cold barely make the news even if it is a recent 90 car multi-death pile up in Pennsylvania.  The events in Paris made huge news here but then, look at who was dying: it all led to the envitable demands to kill more Muslims so of course, it was front page news blasted all over the place here.

The Washington disaster today was most fortunate: rail or car tunnel fires are extremely deadly.  This is due to the nature of being a natural chimney for fires!  Repair work continues on East River Mountain Tunnel – SWVa Today: the Big Walker fire this last summer made little news, too.

This was filmed by a man who was about to drive into the tunnel. Note the very thick, black smoke.

 

Loaded down with about 40,000 pounds of cast stone wrapped in cardboard, the 2006 flatbed tractor-trailer the 55-year-old Akron, Ohio, resident was driving lost power and stopped in the tunnel’s northbound tube. That’s when Theiss noticed the fire – a fire that ended up consuming his rig, scorching the tunnel and shutting down a stretch of Interstate 77 on a busy summer weekend…

 

In June 1993, the northbound tube was also damaged when a motor home caught fire about 200 feet from the West Virginia tunnel entrance. The driver in that blaze was also able to get out safely.

 

A deadly tunnel fire in Switzerland in 2000:

Many fatalities at the top station/restaurant. No instructions to people trapped in the train, the only survivors were due to the fact that some of the passengers were fire fighters who broke out of the train.

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Filed under: Politics Tagged: disasters, fire, New York Times, trains, Washington Image may be NSFW.
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