OK, this is starting to get ridiculous: Orange Line on fire again
Today's fire was under a train just past the southbound platform at North Station, shortly before 11 a.m.
The Boston Fire Department reports the cause was lubricating grease catching fire under the train. The fire was quickly put out; power was shut off in both directions so that firefighters could evacuate roughly 200 passengers back to North Station. The department says there were no injuries from the incident - although as 40 firefighters were in the tunnel, another call came in for an unconscious person on a commuter-rail train at North Station.
This was at least the third track fire on the Orange Line this week and the fourth since Jan. 14.
Ishtany, who was on the train, took some video of other passengers being helped up to the platform at North Station after a walk down the tracks:
Comments
BFD radio activity says its a
BFD radio activity says its a track greaser that was smoking, and a train that had just left North Station towards Haymarket had to stop in the tunnel and is being evacuated with people walking 100 ft through the tunnel back to North Station. It does not sound like the train itself was on fire and it does not sound like there are any injuries.
Maybe the T need to hire more trash picker upers
They need to reemphasize on trash being tossed properly, but they need to clean the tunnels more often. The papers that get sucked in are getting greased up by the same machines. Just takes a spark or two from a train running through to light the next fire.
Almost all of these recent
Almost all of these recent fires have been put out quickly with an extinguisher. I know in the past that I have actually seen MBTA employees put out small track fires with an MBTA extinguisher without ever calling the fire department. I wonder if the MBTA has changed operating procedures and if it is now more likly to bring in the fire department no matter how small the fire. I guess its better to error on the side of safety, but that means that smaller and smaller incidents will result in bigger and longer delays than they would have in the past.
I have to wonder if those procedural changes
also include a new instruction to train operators - "Immediately stop your train if you see ANY burning rubbish, no matter how small the fire is, even if the next station platform is in sight and can be safely reached." - which is what exactly happened this morning.
And, for all the "nanny announcements" lately regarding this issue, I suspect the T won't get serious about addressing the underlying causes of this problem until the Boston Fire Department starts charging them the costs of responding to these incidents. Then I'm sure T staff will again be permitted to try to put out these fires with extinguishers instead of automatically calling in the big guns.
Perhaps the T also needs to instruct
their people on using fire extinguishers as well. Is it really necessary to call the Boston Fire Department every time they need to put out a small track fire caused by a few pieces of paper?
And, as others have noted in other posts, actually placing trash barrels in the stations for people to use would go a long way to reducing the potential for track fires in the first place.
The trash barrels are there
At least in most of the stations I've visited, they have the trash and recycling bins. It's just that lazy douchebags just keep tossing their newspapers and starbuck cups into the tracks below the platforms.
Something is out of whack here.
I'm glad the train itself wasn't on fire, and that there were no injuries thus far, but something's just a little bit out of whack here, with the Orange Line having a fire again. Here's hoping they evacuate the people quickly, get the stupid thing fixed as quickly as possible, and take precautions and preventive measures to keep this from happening again.
Messy situation
About 20 minutes ago, I was on an Orange Line train that terminated at Back Bay. A bunch of us walked over to Copley, where a significant subset of said bunch tried to get on outbound trains when they wanted to continue inbound. The drivers had to explain how to get to the inbound side because there weren't any T officials to direct traffic.