Hey, there! Log in / Register
MBTA says there weren't any fires on the Orange Line last night
By adamg on Tue, 12/22/2009 - 12:26pm
What? Can't believe everything you read on Twitter? MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo says that despite this tweet from the Boston Police Department, there weren't any fires at State Street and Chinatown stations.
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
"I'm going to say this again:
"I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Could this be Mr. Pesaturo's swan song? Fingers crossed.
Just because there is smoke,
Just because there is smoke, does not always mean there is fire.
A train with an overheated brake shoe, or a motor short, or a blown air-compressor, etc.
can generate a lot of smoke, but usually the train crew can cut power to the faulty component and the smoke will stop without the need of the fire department.
Did someone ask the MBTA if they had any trains with mechnical problems at that hour that may have resulted in brief smoke conditions even if there really wasn't any fire that had to be extinguished?
I rode through
chinatown about an hour after the tweet. nothing seemed amiss.
same here
I was on the Orange Line shortly after the Tweet, and there was no sign of trouble. would love to know how this nonsense gets started
Fire Truck
There was certainly a fire truck at the downtown crossing T entrance beside of TJ Max yesterday at this time rolling out the fire hoses and ready to go. There may not have been a physical fire but the fire department responded to something in the very close proximity to the T. I didn’t stick around to see where they were going though. I boarded the Orange Line at the State Street Forrest Hills entrance and didn’t see or smell anything amiss.
Hmmm
I was above ground at the time and there were tons of firetrucks in the area. They were responding to something. Lot of NSTAR crews too.
Could have just been an alarm sounding
If I were to be optimistic and believe in the good faith of my fellow human beings (even the ones who work corporate are human beings, I've been told) it sounds like the BFD responded to an alarm and as onlookers and passengers sent messages to each other, "an alarm sounding at Chinatown station" turned into "a fire at Chinatown station" without actually checking if there was a fire.
Or something like that. Just a guess. The "fire hoses by TJ Maxx" seem to indicate otherwise, but whatever. We'll never get the full story anyway, so let's just make up our own and see whose is the weirdest.
It didn't help ...
That at pretty much the same time, people were getting offloaded at State Street.
The fire department has a
The fire department has a record of what call they responded to and what they found on arrival. It is not unusual for them to start rolling hoses at a possible fire in a large building or the subway even if they don't know yet if there is an actual fire. In the case of the subway, they will even pump water into the pipes heading into the tunnel (dry standpipes) if there is any sort of smoke condition, just so they will have a water supply ready if they do find a need.
Do I win?
You see, what we don't know about the Boston Fire Department is that they're also equipped to deal with the ghouls that inhabit Boston's subway system. As for why the MBTA is so inept at covering this up...
... Well, duh.
Scanners
I used to have a scanner and I heard several fires at chinatown... One time I heard some orange line official yelling at the station attendants to not allow BFD into the station for any reason and that the fire was put out on its own. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He said over the radio he didnt want to shut off power so the BFD could check things out. Yay safety!
I saw smoke and experienced
I saw smoke and experienced delayed trains In Chinatown around 9am Tuesday. Workers were in the tunnel between Chinatown and Downtown doing something, but i couldn't see them clearly.
The T may not want to admit it was a fire, but they had something smokey delaying trains.