Photo by Rolenz.
When a southbound Yellow Line train mysteriously stopped about 800 feet from the L’Enfant Plaza, people were a bit freaked out. But when smoke caused by an “electrical arcing event” on the third rail a few hundred feet ahead of the train started to billow into Metro cars, people began to panic.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Mike Flanigon told reporters at a press briefing last night that passengers of the train “began self-evacuating,” prying open the doors and escaping onto the tracks. In light of the events of yesterday, here’s WMATA’s instructions for how to safely evacuate from a Metro train:
