ALERT: Fire @ Charles/MGH

Third rail was shut off from just beyond Harvard to just beyond South Station. The segments are really long.

how did they get it up and running again so fast?

theseaandalifesaver wrote:

sabourinj wrote:MBTA.com service alerts updated

A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being diverted to substitute shuttle buses between Park Street and Kendall Stations. MBTA personnel are on scene inspecting the Bridge and we hope to resume full service shortly. 5/1/2007 9:31 PM

i don't like how the MBTA refers to this person as a "homeless man". if i started the fire, would the web site says that a man with a home started the fire?

those poor homeless people and their bad reputations.

No the MBTA is just trying to shift the blame from them to a person obviously unable to defend himself. Deniability or just lack of responsibility for the tracks... you decide. However, whenever possible, it seem the T never wants to accept blame for something entirely within its control--here we're talking about keeping the ROW (and other non pedestrian areas) clear of trespassers and trash.

Per a report on the radio this morning the cigarette ignited piles of trash underneath Storrow (probably a homeless hotel) by the side of the road...went 2-alarm with the fire going pretty high up on the underpass. They had to kill the 3rd rail immediately for the FD to start pouring water on the blaze, because they had to hose down the roadway itself because of heavy smoke pouring up through the track pit and storm drains (yikes!)...hence the stuck train on the bridge. Apparently they had problems with smoke actually pouring into the train itself since it didn't get very far over the bridge before power got cut. That must've truly sucked for the evacuating passengers who had to march down the smoky bridge (of course with 3rd rail turned off both directions) to the Kendall side to get to the fence opening. I guess that train's not going back into service until the Cabot crew gives it a thorough cleaning and fumigation. And Charles MGH might not smell too nice this morning since that bore the brunt of the thick black smoke.

Why the @#$% doesn't MassHighway or DCR clean the huge-ass homeless trash piles that everybody knows are underneath the bridge??? Like nobody could've seen this coming, or the difficulty in fighting that kind of blaze in a hard-to-reach highway underpass next to a T station underneath a heavy-rail line. Does it take service getting totally @#$%ed during a Sox postgame and everyone up in arms to get them to do their jobs and pick up the trash??? It's a critical span and top-priority security concern to inspect what's underneath regularly and clean up stuff that's not supposed to be there.

Or does it take a frigging light-up robot prank sign to get them to pay attention to bridge security? Honestly, now! Somebody should get fired over this.

sery2831 wrote:Third rail was shut off from just beyond Harvard to just beyond South Station. The segments are really long.

Maybe they should consider breaking it into a Kendall-Park only segment between crossovers and putting the Cambridge and downtown subways on their own separate circuits. There's naturally higher occurrence of track problems and fires on a span, since they freeze before the ground does in winter weather. Especially a shared-traffic span over a river that's brutal in wintertime. The 3rd rail heaters have to work overtime vs. the other surface segments of the Red Line, and there's all kinds of crap and floating newspapers and leaked motor oil getting sprayed from the roadway as fuel. Plus you've got general security concerns with a critical crosstown bridge that would cause the line to get cut at the drop of a hat.

At least with separated 3rd rail segments you'd be able to turn trains at Kendall and just outside Park while allowing safe evacuation for people actually on the bridge and El segment. That would probably be worth whatever pain in the butt it would be to actually break the power segments.

theseaandalifesaver wrote:

sabourinj wrote:MBTA.com service alerts updated

A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being diverted to substitute shuttle buses between Park Street and Kendall Stations. MBTA personnel are on scene inspecting the Bridge and we hope to resume full service shortly. 5/1/2007 9:31 PM

i don't like how the MBTA refers to this person as a "homeless man". if i started the fire, would the web site says that a man with a home started the fire?

those poor homeless people and their bad reputations.

Yeah, I heard the announcement twice while waiting for a train at Stony Brook before I realized what it was saying. I thought the wording was rather bizarre. The new automated PA system is a joke, it was barely able to pronounce any of the words.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: That must've truly sucked for the evacuating passengers who had to march down the smoky bridge (of course with 3rd rail turned off both directions) to the Kendall side to get to the fence opening. I guess that train's not going back into service until the Cabot crew gives it a thorough cleaning and fumigation. And Charles MGH might not smell too nice this morning since that bore the brunt of the thick black smoke.

Except that the train was evacuated after the smoke died down and they were evacuated to the Boston side... but anyways.

theseaandalifesaver wrote:i don't like how the MBTA refers to this person as a "homeless man". if i started the fire, would the web site says that a man with a home started the fire?

those poor homeless people and their bad reputations.

Unfortunately in this day even going under a bridge is suspicious to people let alone crawling up it (under an active subway line). The T can't just say "due to a fire" or the media will be all over it as the T being unsafe, mis-managed, mal-maintained... well you get the picture. I'd basically guess it was a subtle way of saying "hey it wasn't our fault".

All in all I think the response was excellent. I'm sure the people stuck on the train would disagree, but inter-agency coordination worked pretty well. And they got to put some of the skills from the recent drill to work.

The real question here is will the T finally start to take people smoking on the platforms seriously. There aren't enough officers to enforce it and other officials won't do anything about it... how long until the next persons cigarette thrown in the pit causes trouble.

sabourinj wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: That must've truly sucked for the evacuating passengers who had to march down the smoky bridge (of course with 3rd rail turned off both directions) to the Kendall side to get to the fence opening. I guess that train's not going back into service until the Cabot crew gives it a thorough cleaning and fumigation. And Charles MGH might not smell too nice this morning since that bore the brunt of the thick black smoke.

Except that the train was evacuated after the smoke died down and they were evacuated to the Boston side... but anyways.

Even better!

Guess you can add the T to agencies that embarrassed themselves with poor disaster planning yesterday. I shudder to think how Boston authorities would get graded if Homeland Security had the power to spring a pop-quiz style terrorism practice drill on them on short-notice.

Several times last year, the Red Line was bused between Park and Kendall while construction work occurred at Charles station. So there has to be a way to do this.

theseaandalifesaver wrote:

sabourinj wrote:MBTA.com service alerts updated

A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being diverted to substitute shuttle buses between Park Street and Kendall Stations. MBTA personnel are on scene inspecting the Bridge and we hope to resume full service shortly. 5/1/2007 9:31 PM

i don't like how the MBTA refers to this person as a "homeless man". if i started the fire, would the web site says that a man with a home started the fire?

those poor homeless people and their bad reputations.

The Longfellow underpasses are a well-known homeless resting place. In the little grassy area at the bottom of the Boston-side stairs under the pedestrian overpass there's evidence that people sleep there every night. You can usually find them on the Cambridge-side stairs which get less foot traffic, and even up in the girders over Memorial Drive there's a comfy and relatively weather-protected sleeping place. This is why there was trash on the Storrow underpass up in the girders...they can live there and not be bothered because there's no pedestrian access and a busy highway to prevent regular patrols. And I wouldn't go in the long and very dark pedestrian tunnel under the bridge along Memorial after dusk.

So while it may be poor taste to finger a homeless person, it was probably the safe and logical conclusion. But still...high security priority and you don't clean heaps of trash that have piled up in that spot, much less check regularly to see who's piling up the trash? It was a two-alarm blaze...all the fuel for that fire had to have been piling up for months if not years. That is just blatant incompetence.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: Even better!

Guess you can add the T to agencies that embarrassed themselves with poor disaster planning yesterday. I shudder to think how Boston authorities would get graded if Homeland Security had the power to spring a pop-quiz style terrorism practice drill on them on short-notice.

I fail to see that. The inident was reported - Boston Fire, Transit Police and Boston Police were on scene within minutes. T inspectors responded to cut the 3rd rail power and test it so BFD could get to the area. The T's OCC was able to pull up video of what was going on via the new camera's at the Charles station. Transit and Boston PD were communicating to relocate their officers to better locations to direct traffic and passengers. State PD responded to a large number of intersections to control detours around the area. 425 passengers were evacuated without injury from stuck trains. Within 3 hours of the incident happening the structure was cleared, vehicle and subway service restored, and back to business as usual.

And thanfully they did have a drill recently that helped everyone have some experience with dealing with this type of situation.

Now I'll say the bus situation was a bit of a fiasco, but you do have to remember that it isn't like they have 50 extra busses and drivers just sitting waiting for something to happen. Someone pointed out a while ago that the T, although slow and confusing at it's bussing sometimes, will get you home. I've been stuck on other transit systems and basically told "oh well, it's not running right now."

I agree with sabourinj, the response and organization was good. I was in the fire service for college degree (Fire Science) and doing the real thing for a few years and I have always been interested in that stuff. As far as the organization it was very like clockwork and done by the books or (SOP) as they call it. I had Boston Fire live on my computer during most of the incident and they had the separate divisions and sectors that were responsible for different tasks. I am not sure what type of material that is down on the track ROW, probably wood of some sort but a fire down their is a pain in the butt. Having to gain access to the bulk of the fire from the ROW and trying to hit it from below as well if they tried that. None the less allot of work and ALOT more overhaul, the crappy stuff for the probie. LOL

I’am sure the T is hating this, and the passengers were pissed off, but if you haven’t been involved in any type of fire before, believe me, its not like you put water on it and just leave.Oh well stuff happens. A fast response and organized incident command by the Boston Emergency Services and successful mutual aid form Cambridge FD and others helped this go smoothly.

Stevie I'am sure you agree from your past background?

Yesterday and this morning while riding the Red Line to/from work, I had no problem at all, things in my time were running smoothly as if nothing ever happened.

From what I've read on the bostonist, the T did a good job with the response EXCEPT FOR THOSE PASSENGERS STUCK ON TRAINS AT CHARLES STREET!

http://www.bostonist.com