http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewPage_update.cfm?ReportID=1406
Quote:
8:14 a.m. An Orange Line train at Potomac Ave in the direction of New Carrollton was taken out of service because of a door problem, and customers were required to exit the train.
I love it ... gives the impression it was no big deal.
Here's what really happened ... we had just left the Clarendon station and entered the tunnel between there and the Courthouse station when the train lost all power ... completely dark, train stopped. I was close to the driver at the front end of the train and as the lights went out I heard her say, "Oh my god!" That didn't sound so good to me. Then I heard her talking on the radio to get help.
Across the aisle from me was sitting a young man who was obviously developmentally disabled in some way. He started to moan about being "stuck" and not getting to work on time. It was great to instantly hear a couple people between him and me tell him, in soothing tones, "It'll be all right." He continued to be fairly agitated; as time went on he was more specific about his fears and everyone nearby worked to reassure him. Someone lent him a phone to call his boss. Someone asked his name -- Philip -- and asked about his work -- delivering mail around his office building.
We sat in the dark for 20 minutes. The driver walked through with a flashlight a couple of times. Other than that, cell phones and ipods and such provided the only light. There were attempts at humor, many of them funny. People let each other use their phones (the ones able to connect while in the tunnel) to call work, home, etc. At one point there was a burst of laughter from a lot of people at the other end of our car. I didn't hear the joke. Even though some were probably pretty annoyed on the inside, it seemed like people were pulling together to stay calm on the outside. At our end of the car, someone told Philip "they're working on it." Philip said, "how do you know?" We laughed. Philip is no dummy.
Then the train started to move backward into Clarendon station again. You could feel the communal sense of relief in the air. They still had to figure out how to get people off the train; the doors weren't working. There were half-jokes about forcing the doors. Philip said something about breaking the windows. Someone told him, "We don't need to do that, yet." We laughed at the "yet."
Finally, we heard they were opening one door at the far end of the train. So we sat for a while until we were finally able to walk to the far end and out the door onto the platform. Then they were able to take the broken train down the track and clear the way for more trains. The whole thing put me only about 30 minutes behind schedule. I actually walked away feeling good about the experience.
Being a Southerner myself, a lot of what passes for normal on the metro strikes me as completely rude. I've had more than one person bounce off of me when they were rushing to get around other people and didn't really have enough room. I've heard extremely foul things said in anger. I've physically pushed people off of me when I couldn't take them leaning on me anymore. I once asked a man and his female companion if I was invisible because he kept moving so that his backpack hit me in the chest, even though we were the only people in that section of the train. (He looked at me funny and said, "No you're not invisible" to which I replied, "Oh I was trying to figure out why you keep bumping into me." He moved away).
Philip was on the edge of a panic more than once and so I think some of us were on our best behavior because we were concerned about setting him off. Whatever the reasons, in a pinch, people showed real consideration for others.
