Photo by Darren & Brad.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, asthma, sleep apnea, and anxiety are some of the long-term effects that Metro commuters at L’Enfant Plaza say they continue to suffer a year after smoke filled cars on a Green/Yellow train. The incident left 61-year-old grandmother Carol Glover dead and more than 80 others hospitalized.

“It was black smoke,” says Kim Brooks-Rodney, a lawyer with Cohen & Cohen, who, along Ashcraft & Gerel, is suing Metro over the incident. “They were breathing that crap for 45 minutes. What was in that smoke? We need to know so that 10 years down the line, doctors know what to look for. We had a pregnant woman in her third trimester on that train—tell us what’s in that smoke.”

Today, the firms jointly filed 88 claims from a mixture of people on the trains and the platform, and Brooks-Rodney says that they’ve got 15 more clients they still need to get permission from to file suits on their behalf. Metro declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

“What harm to any pending litigation would it be to tell people what is in that smoke?” Brooks-Rodney asks.

In a letter published in Express yesterday, Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld marked the anniversary by pointing out the steps Metro has taken since, including improved coordination with emergency responders, improvements to the tunnel ventilation systems, and working on a new radio system. Wiedefeld—who did not work for Metro at the time of the incident—is also recruiting a Chief Safety Officer.

Mayor Muriel Bowser reiterated the improvements in a statement today. “In the aftermath of the Metro tragedy, I instructed our first responders to evaluate how we could improve our response and ensure the safety of our passengers on public transportation,” said Bowser, noting that now all 1,600 Fire and Emergency Medical Services employees have been trained in Metro incident response.

These changes weren’t enough for the Federal Transit Administration, which in October took over direct oversight of Metro’s safety. The FTA announced this week it would conduct “periodic to daily and unannounced inspections throughout Metrorail system” in a statement from Acting Administrator Therese McMillan.

The FTA has already given the transportation system a list of almost 80 recommendations based on the smoke incident, which Metro has said it would adopt.

In addition to the 88 lawsuits filed today, Brooks-Rodney says there are four other suits already pending. A judge has issued a stay on the cases until the National Transportation Safety Board issues its final investigative report on the incident.

“As soon as the stay is lifted, these cases should be able to proceed within a year,” says Brooks-Rodney. Even with the changes adopted over the course of the year, she says, “I see the same old Metro.” And she would know—she used to work as a defense attorney for WMATA. “I know how they work. Metro is going to do damage control and try and avoid admitting liability.”