Metro Ventilation Fails: Man Dies

I used to live in the DC Metro Area and was often forced to ride the Metro into the City for work. Those subways used to get crowded, and people were hacking up fluish mucous and various other respiratory diseases; you never wanted to actually hold onto the hand rails. And often, the escalators out of the stations didn’t work, sometimes for weeks at a time. The Metro system is run by a bunch of political cronies, and they don’t put the fares back into upgrades. Today there was a fire in a tunnel outside of Le’Fant plaza where I used to work for DHS. One man died from smoke inhalation.

NTSB: An 'arcing event' involving 3rd rail and power supply cables detected on #metro http://t.co/EVyTDGb5aZ pic.twitter.com/pFxbKhEqJe

— WTOP (@WTOP) January 13, 2015

So not only do the escalators not work, this is proof that the ventilation systems don’t work either. The air handlers should be designed to vacuate the air in seconds! Not allow the platform to fill up with toxic smog as was pictured above.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, it is clear that the Metro in our Nation’s capitol is not taking threats seriously. Had this fire been a toxic gas bomb, hundreds would have died. How can the Metro treat the ventilation system as an optional service? Oh, just as easily as they treat escalators as optional. The Metro should face criminal charges for this failure in their infrastructure.