D.C. Metro Re-opens
Isn’t it ironic that before you go on a vacation or a work trip somewhere, you hear horror stories or accidents that have occurred in your destination?
Granted it may not always happen - but just occasionally, it does. Things are no different for my upcoming trip to the Nation’s capital.
Yesterday, the Washington, D.C. metro’s “Orange Line” de-railed, leaving approximately 400 passengers feeling quite helpless.
The derailment caused major backups and delays of up to an hour on Metro’s second-busiest line just before the Monday afternoon rush, and problems persisted into the evening. There were no reports of injuries, but a pregnant passenger was sent to a hospital for observation, Metro officials said. Metro used a rescue train to evacuate 412 passengers from the derailed train, including a man in a wheelchair, officials said.
Now this just gives me a warm-and-fuzzy all over. Granted, my trip is going to be a “flying” one (pardon the pun) - leaving here Monday morning, arriving there Monday afternoon, and then leaving there immediately after my meeting on Tuesday morning. But still, I’ll be using the grandiose metro of D.C. from the airport to the hotel (my hotel is actually one block off the green line). I just hope nothing happens to the yellow or green lines!
Source:Â Washington Post
Yep, heat is going to cause more derailments if the engineers continue to drive the trains at excessive speed. They will kill someone if they already haven’t taken a little life already. I’m surprised the papers kept reporting no injuries, insisting NO ONE WAS HURT! ALL IS WELL! ALL IS WELLLLLL!! When a expecting mother, YES a pregnant woman was hospitalized after the Metro Train Derailment, who was suffering from abdominal pains! Hopefully, she didn’t have a miscarriage and loose the baby. I’m sure the Metro System will be paying out a few million to that woman if she loses the baby. Personally, with the gas crunch the trains have been loaded with too many people and exceeding their max weight allowed for safe transport. If the Fire Department has laws for excessive people in a building for Fire Code, why hasn’t anyone been enforcing Max Occupancy for the Metro Trains? The Trains have been loading far too many people on them, I would speculate that overloading/weight and speed were the two main factors for this derailment. Someone should arrest the Metro Engineer for exceeding max safe weight and speed during this accident. Or at least give him a ticket!