Photo by Rolenz.

On Friday, the National Transportation Board of Safety released their initial findings of last Monday’s fatal Metro smoke incident at L’Enfant Plaza. Among the initial findings by the NTSB was that power to the third rail—which was producing smoke as a result of an electrical arcing event—wasn’t shut off for 44 minutes.

But a new report, conducted by the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services
Department by request of Mayor Muriel Bowser, found some more troubling circumstances in last weeks incident. Mainly, that firefighters and EMS personnel ” encountered difficulty communicating with each other in the Metro station using traditional radio communication channels.”

Furthermore, the report says that this was a known problem and that “FEMS notified WMATA on January 8, 2015, that there was no 800 MHz radio coverage anywhere in the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station.”

Like the NTSB’s report, the D.C. FEMS report outlines the timeline of events that occurred last Monday, corroborating initial reports of a chaotic and delayed response time. Following this report, the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency is completing a “full report on the incident,” which will include a “comprehensive review of information froM FEMS, other District government agencies, additional reviews of Computer Aided Dispatch information, radio transmissions, and 911 calls.”

Additionally, that report will investigate the problems with FEMS personnel’s radio transmission problems in Metro stations and tunnels further.

You can read the full report below:

Initial Report on the LEnfant Plaza Metro Incident January-12-2015