The crash and emotional aftermath

It’s been three days since the fatal metro crash in DC, and you can still feel the impact.

Ordinarily, I commute via metrobus – route 63, between Takoma and the Federal Triangle. It drops me off within a block of my work and it only takes ten to fifteen minutes longer than the metro does. (Not to mention, it costs half of what the metro does at rush hour… which is a substantial savings for a lowly intern.)

But Matt was in town, and for whatever reason, this means that I splurge. We were both in downtown DC on Monday around 4:30, and we decided to go home via metro to buy some time. Mondays are the days where I go down to the Savory Café to host an open mic, and it’s sometimes just nice to have those few extra minutes beforehand.

When we stopped shortly before Fort Totten, it wasn’t anything unusual. Trains stop all the time, usually if there’s a train ahead on the platform. After five or ten minutes, people began to open up to each other. It’s some kind of weird social phenomenon; if the train’s moving, it’s polite not to speak (at all, much less to fellow passengers). If the train has been stopped for more than five minutes, a sort of awkward air settles in, and it becomes acceptable to make some sort of sarcastic remark to your neighbor in order to clear the air. I experienced this when I got stuck in a train underground for twenty minutes, only that time was more fun. It was later at night, and the train was packed like a can of sardines. As soon as they announced the disabled train ahead, everyone began laughing and groaning all at once. One woman with two chocolate-syrup-whipped-cream beverages in clear plastic containers shielded them with her shoulder, smiling, as a passenger made a sarcastic joke about being hungry. Someone said we should sing a song; a man crowded up against a wall asked if it was anyone’s birthday.

The atmosphere was similar on this particular day, only the crowd was the older, rush-hour employees returning home, not the late night rabble-rousers. After awhile, the train conductor made an announcement: there was an electrical failure at Fort Totten. Great, we said. Metro trains jam-packed with people are stuck because of some stupid electrical failure. It’s the middle of the day, what could have possibly caused an electrical failure? Speculation peppered the conversation, until the news spread like fire, radiating outward from cell phones; two trains crashed; something derailed; we’re on breaking news right now; someone died.

It hit Matt right away. It didn’t hit me for another half an hour.

Someone died, he said.

Yeah, I said. I sat there uncomfortably, knowing I should feel something, but… what? People die. A few weeks ago, two people separately committed suicide using the metrorail system in DC. It was sad, sure, and probably terrible for the people on the train, and the train conductor, but… too distant. Too far away. Not important.

After a little while, the conductor came picking his way through the crowd. The train reversed and went to Rhode Island Avenue station, where everyone was dumped. Everyone. Hundreds and thousands of people, as the trains came rolling in, poured through that station. People were crammed up against the exit booths. And these were no tourists, no confused travelers who couldn’t figure out which way the little card goes in. These were rush-hour veterans with Smartrip cards. “Let us out for free,” shouted a man behind us. “Let us out for free!”

A short while later, the gates opened, probably not to honor one man’s request, but because of the density of scared and confused people. Details of the incident were scarce. The announcements at the metro station cited a “police incident.” We had no idea whether the collision was northbound, southbound, head-on… many people believed that they were right behind the train that was hit (which was later proven wrong; the collision was on the southbound track, and everyone getting off at that station was going north).

That was when the chaos began. Why are mobs so dangerous? It’s like everyone gets stupid all at once. Busses and police began rolling onto the scene. Crowds began to pour off the sidewalk in a flood; metro workers in neon vests tried to herd people. “Back up on the curb! Back up on the curb! The busses can’t get through!” Balding men in suits could be seen barking at the metro workers.

The police drove through, blasting instruction through their megaphones, and that was authority enough for most people. They crammed back up on the sidewalk, except for one man (again, balding with a suit) who approached the driver’s side window aggressively. That’s all I saw; the masses concealed the rest. There were people everywhere. Just everywhere. I saw a young woman being loaded onto a stretcher, though the reason was not immediately discernable. Metrobus drivers jumping into busses, still in their street clothes. There were quite a few people around signing, too. One young woman waved goodbye to a woman she’d been signing with, then got on her phone and explained that she was safe, and that she had helped this deaf woman call her family to let them know that she was safe. The woman on the phone brought up a good point (though I was eavesdropping, in a sense): there was no way a deaf person would have known what was going on. All the announcements were auditory.

At 6:35 (about two hours after we got on the train), I got a call from my dad. And Matt got a call from his mom. He missed the call, and when he tried to return the call, he got a message saying that the network was busy. (No, really?) I’d never really considered needing good coverage for a situation like that, where a network might be really overloaded all at once.

That’s when I realized how big this was. Entire cell phone networks were hung up. People around Philadelphia were hearing about it. This was breaking news. This was bad. Real bad.

That’s when it really, finally, hit me. People were dead and it could have been us. I arrived at that point when the panic in the body finally catches up with your brain, and you start imagining all the ways that everything could have gone wrong, far, far more personally.

After mentally shaking off enough of these thoughts to function, we began to wonder: how do we get home from here? The answers varied for a long time (see the part where I talk about the mass confusion). Eventually, the metro folk decided that the shuttle busses would stop at Fort Totten and Takoma, and that the people needing to go to Silver Spring could transfer at Takoma. I don’t think this was a crowd-pleaser; I’d guess, just based on personal observation, that most people going up the red line on a weekday are trying to go to Silver Spring. It was, however, a solution, and so for maybe 45 minutes, we tried to catch a bus.

Docility was not our friend. We waited patiently on the curb for a long time, just like the nice policemen told us to, as bus after bus loaded. We found that we had not advanced, and that the sea of faces had shifted – without us. Eventually, we saw a shuttle approaching, and I took Matt’s hand with resolution. We’re getting on this bus. I don’t remember if I said it out loud. If so, I hope I said it quietly.

It was a little like body surfing, and a little like a mosh pit. At first, we were more or less swept out to the shuttle, as the crowd bulged out to meet it. Then there was a pause. And everyone began shouting, where is this bus going? Where is this bus going? Where is this bus going? And they kept it up with such fervor that no one could hear the response from the driver. Eventually, I caught wind of something like “Fort Totten and Takoma.” Out of sheer irritation toward the mob, and maybe too much experience being an obnoxious orientation leader, I leaned my body backwards, pointed my face to the sky, and yelled “FORT TOTTEN AND TAKOMA!!!”

People around me still had to ask me what I said. I think Matt addressed them, more politely than I did.

Anyway, shortly after my bellowing session, people began to feel like it was acceptable to get on the bus. That’s when the mosh pit part kicked in. I was being pushed from behind, pretty much exactly in a fashion you’d expect from a mosh pit. Luckily, I’ve been in mosh pits before, so I knew the rules. If you’re pushed, you push back, but you try to keep everyone standing straight up. I had to push back on the crowd to avoid crushing the wheelie suitcase in front of me. (Worst place ever to have a wheelie suitcase. I know it’s heavy, maybe, but this is kind of an emergency and we’re kind of in a mosh pit.)

Matt and I barely got on the bus, and everything went smoothly after that. We arrived home at 8 – a full hour after the open mic at Savory was supposed to start, and 3.5 hours after we began trying to get home. Theoretically, we could have still gone for about 45 minutes of the open mic, but… food.

When I got to the office on Tuesday, I found that I was obsessed by the crash. I couldn’t stop checking CNN and WMATA’s website. It was a compulsion. How many people died? How many injured? And most of all, what the crap actually happened?

So far: a southbound train was making a stop at Fort Totten. The second train, also southbound, should have stopped automatically, but didn’t. The second train vaulted up over the stopped train. Nine people died on the striking train, including the driver, and over 70 people were injured. So far, all they know is that the emergency brake was probably deployed, and an anomaly was found in one of the circuits that tells the train what to do when it’s in automatic mode. The striking train was also an older model, for which the National Transportation Safety Board recommended replacement in 2006. Cost was an object for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, so it didn’t happen. Now they’re asking the government for some money. Those trains cost about $3 milion a pop, and they have to replace over 300 of them.

Basically, all these details coming out make it seem very much like this accident could have happened anywhere, at any time. It seems like the whole system is full of glitches and outdated equipment. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant to the thousands of metro patrons (or former patrons). On the bus this morning, I overheard a casual conversation to this effect: “So, you gotten on the metro yet?” The responder laughed. “Nah. Maybe next week.”

I feel the same. I found myself riding last night, by accident. I wanted to go to aikido, sure, but I forgot that it means riding the metro home. So I went down to the station, only to find I couldn’t get in. SEE METRO STATION MANAGER, said the entry gates as I swiped my Smartrip card. He was standing right there, so I saw him. He checked it on the computer, swiped it in the exit lane, and then handed it back to me. Then I realized what had happened: the card knows when it gets on the metro and when it gets off. I didn’t swipe out at Rhode Island on Monday. Even such a slight nudge sent me spinning off into perturbed memories.

I usually get on the last car in the train, because it’s quicker when you get off at Takoma. Once I found myself faced with that last car’s door, looming wide, I found that I really didn’t want to get on. I ran up the train and got in the next car. (Aside from that, service hadn't yet resumed at Takoma -- they finally opened it up today, three days after the crash.)

Honestly, I just sat there, trying not to cry. I was on the verge of tears the whole way home, which was a little strange because I hadn’t thought the events had affected me so badly. But I couldn’t ride without jumping at every little sound, without wondering if the train would derail on a heightened track, without wondering if there would be a sudden, sickening jolt. Without wondering if I would be called upon to save someone’s life, or if I would call out for someone to save me.

I know these are outrageous thoughts, and that the system has been very safe for decades (the last fatal crash was in the early 80’s). I want to be a good environmentalist and say that my faith is in the public transportation system, which is still safer than going by car, but I can’t help it. People died on Monday, practically right in my backyard, because of the public transportation system. I’m not going to get over it for awhile.