April 7, 2005
BY JOSHUA ROBIN, DEBORAH MORRIS AND PETE BOWLES, STAFF WRITERS
Newsday
A day after the city's transit chief painted a rosy picture of the subway system, hundreds of commuters were evacuated and service on four lines was disrupted yesterday when a faulty circuit breaker set off a blaze that sent smoke through the tunnels.
Four trains ground to a halt between stations when an underground circuit breaker malfunctioned at 11:02 a.m. in Harlem, causing service to be suspended on the A, C, B and D lines. Service was restored at 2:30 p.m.
Charles Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said between 600 to 700 passengers were stranded on the four trains. He said the fire burned some cables and equipment at a substation at St. Nicholas Avenue and 141st Street.
The stranded straphangers were escorted out of the stalled trains by firefighters and transit crews, some on evacuation devices stretched across to another train that carried them to safety. A Fire Department spokesman said a transit worker suffered minor burns and seven subway riders were treated for minor injuries.
Some passengers who were evacuated at the 145th Street station in Manhattan complained they had been stranded for more than an hour.
William Walker, 49, of Inwood said most passengers on his D train remained calm. "I could smell the smoke, but it wasn't anything overwhelming," he said.
Akeem Phillips, 18, of the Bronx said there was no panic on his stalled train, just annoyance over a lack of communications. "I wasn't scared, just worried about being late for work," he said.
"They need to fix the problem, use all the money they get from all these hikes, and do something," Phillips said. "The trains are always crowded, late and dirty. Then you get stuck? It's just crazy."
Service was suspended on the A and C lines between 59th and 168th streets in Manhattan, on the B line between Brighton Beach in Brooklyn and Bedford Park Boulevard in the Bronx, and on the D line between 57th Street in Manhattan and 205 Street in the Bronx.
The disruptions follow a series of major incidents in the subways and came a day after Lawrence Reuter, NYC Transit president, told a City Council hearing that the subways were running better than ever.
In a statement last night, Paul Fleuranges, a transit spokesman, said the incident "is not emblematic of any systemwide breakdown or lack of maintenance."
He said workers were in the substation at the time of the malfunction "following routine procedures to remove power" in preparation for the installation of a new signal system on the B and D lines from 145th Street to 205th Street. "Obviously, something went wrong," Fleuranges said. "What, we don't know."
He also issued an apology for the recent rash of disruptions. "This is not the level of service we aim to provide -- and our 4.5 million daily riders have come to expect," he said.
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