Metro said Thursday that it will take several steps to further improve safety after a deadly smoke incident, including creating a maintenance crew dedicated to keeping its tunnels clear of debris and equipment that could spark fires or create obstructions.
The incident, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, exposed an array of problems with the transit agency's infrastructure, upkeep and emergency preparedness. Several of the newly announced improvements address areas that had already been flagged as trouble spots.
“As our work with the NTSB investigation continues, I have concluded that additional actions can and will be taken to improve safety for our rail passengers, employees and first responders,” Deputy General Manager Rob Troup, Metro’s No. 2 official, said in a statement.
In the L’Enfant incident, a six-car train stopped in the Yellow Line tunnel just south of the station after it encountered heavy smoke. From the limited disclosures made by investigators, it appears that electricity escaping from faulty track-based power cables in the tunnel generated tremendous heat and perhaps caused a small fire, possibly involving debris.
Images from the smoke-filled train and rescues at L’Enfant Plaza station in 2015
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One person died in the January 2015 Metro incident in a tunnel outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station after scores of riders were trapped aboard a train as it filled with smoke.
Metro already has announced an extensive cable-replacement program.
On Thursday, the agency said it would create “a dedicated maintenance crew to continuously clear tunnel passageways of debris, equipment or other potential obstructions across Metro’s 100 miles of tunnel segments.”
Also, beginning next month, the agency will undertake “a multiyear maintenance program to replace or rehabilitate all 88,044 lights in Metro tunnels.”
While scores of passengers on the stopped train waited more than 30 minutes in darkness for rescuers to arrive, Metro botched the operation of its tunnel ventilation fans, the NTSB has said. The giant fans, two of which did not function properly, were activated in a way that moved the smoke toward the train instead of away from it, according to a preliminary NTSB report.
Troup has said that Metro inspected dozens of ventilation fans throughout the subway system after the incident to see whether they were working properly. The agency said Thursday that it plans to begin a more comprehensive effort, “establishing a quality audit process for ventilation-system testing to ensure compliance with established maintenance and testing practices.”
Earlier this month, the NTSB said it planned to examine a February incident in which an Orange Line train encountered tunnel smoke near the Court House station. The safety board is looking into whether there are similarities to what caused the L'Enfant calamity. No one was injured in the Feb. 11 incident.
Metro also said Thursday that starting this summer, it will “review protocols of the alarms in the Rail Operations Control Center with the goal of separating critical alarms from non-critical notifications.”
The problem of alarms continually sounding at the Landover train-control center — called the ROCC — has been known to Metro for several years and might have contributed to the agency’s slow response to the Jan. 12 incident.
Since 2013, Metro has said in internal documents that computer software at the ROCC needs to be modernized. But the work of drafting specifications and eventually finding a contractor to supply and install the software have proceeded at a snail's pace. The computer system generates so many needless alarms about smoke and other problems that the warnings sometimes go unheeded by controllers, Metro said.
“An excessive volume of alarms occur incessantly . . . such that the resultant alarm log has become so much ‘noise’ and of little use,” according to one document.
Full details of how Landover train controllers and supervisors responded during the smoke incident at L’Enfant have yet to be disclosed.
However, Metro has issued new rules for the center, instructing employees not to shout or create distractions by moving away from their assigned consoles during emergencies.
The NTSB has scheduled a public hearing on the L'Enfant incident for June 23 and June 24, and Metro has hired communications teams to help prepare for those sessions.
In a statement Thursday, the agency said, “The additional safety measures were identified as part of Metro’s collaborative review with the [NTSB] investigation team, but are not to be construed as formal recommendations from the NTSB.”
Troup said, “While we remain committed to taking any actions recommended by the NTSB in their final investigation report,” which is still months from being completed, “we are not waiting to make safety improvements where we see opportunities.”
