NTSB: past subway train accidents raised concerns

WASHINGTON — Past accidents on the Washington-area subway system raised concerns about the safety commuter trains that were not addressed, said a federal official investigating the cause of a deadly rush-hour crash that killed seven people Monday.

“We know accidents are going to happen,” but there must be a better system to prevent them said Debbie Hersman, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

There was conflicting information about the number of fatalities.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Tuesday that seven had died in the crash along a part of Metro system track that carries passengers from the District of Columbia into suburban Maryland. The District of Columbia Fire Department Web site announced early Tuesday morning that three bodies had been found in addition to the six fatalities reported earlier.

Fenty said two victims were hospitalized in critical condition. More than 70 others were injured and taken to hospitals on Monday, he said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hersman said the NTSB warned in 2006 that there were safety problems related to trains rolling back on their tracks.

“When the train rolled back, the operator was not able to stop it,” she said. Hersman said the NTSB recommended that a specific series of cars be phased out or retrofitted to make them more crashworthy.

“We saw that they did not do well against the newer series of cars as far as crash-worthiness,” Hersman said.

The Metrorail transit system “was not able to do what we asked them to do,” which was to either to retrofit the thousand-series or phase them out, she said.

It was not known whether the trains involved in Monday’s crash were in the series that were recommended for replacement or retrofitting.

Monday’s crash was the worst in the history of Metrorail, which has shuttled tourists and federal workers to and from the nation’s capital for more than three decades.

The only other fatal crash occurred on Jan. 13, 1982, when three people died as a result of a derailment beneath downtown. That was a day of disaster in the capital: Shortly before the subway crash, an Air Florida plane slammed into the 14th Street Bridge immediately after takeoff from Washington National Airport across the Potomac River. The plane crash, during a severe snowstorm, killed 78 people.

In January 2007, a subway train derailed in downtown Washington, sending 20 people to the hospital and prompting the rescue of 60 others from the tunnel. In November 2006, two Metro track workers were struck and killed by an out-of-service train. An investigation found that the train operator failed to follow safety procedures. Another Metro worker was struck and killed in May 2006.