This Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the deadliest day in Metro’s history.

The city will use the day to break ground on a memorial park for the nine people who died when two Red Line trains collided between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations on June 22, 2009. Mayor Vince Gray will be in attendance, as will family members of the victims and the design team tasked with creating the park.

“The goal of the Memorial Park is to honor the nine victims, the 80 who were injured, first responders and others whose lives were altered by the collision,” the city says in a release. “The Memorial Park will allow for meditation, remembrance, reflection, hope and renewal for all affected by the tragedy, especially the twelve orphaned children whose parents died in the incident. The Metro crash that day was the deadliest accident in the system’s history, and one of the worst subway rail accidents in modern history. It united the victims in a common tragic fate and affected the families and the community in ways that reverberate still.”

The design and architecture firm, Hunt Laudi Studio and sculptor Barbara Liotta were selected earlier this year to create the park. At the time, the design proposal included sculptural artworks and a memorial stone wall. A memorial plaque, seen above, was installed on the New Hampshire Avenue bridge in 2012.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the cause of the crash to be the failure of track circuit modules, which caused the automatic train control system to lose detection of one train.

The ground breaking begins at 2 p.m. at the Metro Memorial Park site (South Dakota and New Hampshire avenue NE).