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Green Line Metro Train Derails; at Least 18 Hurt
Paramedics start to transport a pregnant woman who began having contractions after the Metro derailment at the Mount Vernon Square Station.
(By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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Switches and a short section of curved rails south of the station make it possible to shunt trains between the inbound and outbound tracks. A large proportion of derailments typically occur at such sites.
The front cars of the train apparently passed over the switch safely, but the wheels of the fifth car left the track. All cars remained upright. But as the fifth car tottered, its left side struck the wall of the tunnel, according to accounts.
"All of a sudden we felt a knock," said passenger Sonya Payne of Silver Spring. "We could see the car in front of us going sideways," she said.
In her car, she said, "it was a little scary." But she said "nobody panicked. It was pretty calm."
Farbstein said only the fifth car of the six-car train left the rails, but Larry Schultz, a fire department official, said the cars in front of and behind that car also were damaged. It was not clear whether material was dislodged from the tunnel wall.
"It's a bit of a mess down there," Schultz said.
The first car of the train halted inside the station, and most of the second car was also in the station when the train stopped. As many as 60 passengers on cars left inside the tunnel were evacuated by rescue workers, who led them onto a catwalk.
Farbstein said the derailment involved cars from the relatively new 5000 series.
In a 20-month period ending in October 2004, eight Metro trains derailed. Four of those derailments involved 5000-series cars. Those four occurred on side tracks, and no passengers were aboard. Recently, months have passed without a reported Metro derailment.
On Jan. 13, 1982, in one of the most serious incidents on the system, three people were killed when a train left the tracks as it backed up from an improperly closed switch.
In another major incident, 20 people went to hospitals with minor injuries after a Nov. 3, 2004 collision in the Woodley Park-Zoo Station.
Safety questions have focused recently on three incidents in 13 months in which four employees working on or near the tracks were struck and fatally injured by trains.
Metro is the nation's second-busiest subway system and recorded 206 million trips in the last fiscal year.
Staff writers Allan Lengel and David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report.
