Update on Metro Problems

From the 5:00 hour to the 9:00 hour Sunday evening, fire departments in D.C. and Northern Virginia ran 8 different reports of smoke problems along the Metro system. Separate calls went out in Fairfax County, Arlington County, Alexandria City and the District of Columbia.

Metro and D.C. Fire & EMS said some of the calls were connected to a disabled train that was being moved through the system and spread smoke through a number of stations on the Blue and Orange Lines.

D.C. Fire & EMS believes this could account for as many five of the calls. Metro told us it looks like the moving train was only involved in 3 of the calls. A Metro spokesperson said there were other apparently unrelated issues involving small electrical fires that explained the other smoke calls along with a fire in a storage room near the Reagan National Airport station.

The first call was at the Mount Vernon Square Station at 5:45 p.m. The last call was along the tracks in Alexandria just south of Crytsal City. Alexandria units were handling that one around 9:30 p.m. when I visited D.C. Fire & EMS Chief Dennis Rubin and his brain trust at their operations center at Engine 2. Once again Battalion Chief Jim Vlassopoulos dashed across F Street to Metro’s OCC. He had been back and forth all evening helping coordinate communications between Metro, D.C. Fire & EMS and the departments in Northern Virginia.

D.C. Fire & EMS sent assignments to Mt. Vernon Square, Farragut West, Farragut North, and Foggy Bottom. Arlington handled Reagan National Airport and Rosslyn. Fairfax County went to Huntington. Alexandria had a call on the tracks south of Crystal City.