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NEW YORK, NY September 06, 2005 —Since the July bombings in the London transit system, New Yorkers have been reminded of the real potential for a similar attack in the subways. Police have been searching bags. And the MTA has now hired Lockheed Martin to upgrade electronic surveillance. Our best barometer of New York's readiness is to look at how subway fires are handled. In this special report, WNYC's Beth Fertig investigates a 2004 explosion in a subway tunnel that revealed some striking communication problems.

REPORTER: On February 29th of last year, conductor Charles Cummings was working in the center car of a D train, opening and closing the doors. It was a Sunday afternoon. The train had just left the Broadway Lafayette station, heading toward West Fourth, when the motorman saw a man in the tunnel throwing things onto the track. The train stopped. Cummings went to the front.

CUMMINGS: And we’re both standing there and looking at this guy. I mean he’s breaking out bulbs and throwing debris.

REPORTER: Cummings says the motorman called the Transit Authority’s control center in Brooklyn to report the incident. They watched as the man continued throwing things.

CUMMINGS: I mean garbage, fire extinguishers, ladders. It looked like materials that they were working with or had excess materials and it was just left there.

REPORTER: Cummings says the control center asked for the train’s location several times but gave no instructions.

CUMMINGS: About 10 minutes had passed and we kept going back and forth with control and control asked “what’s he doing”. And my motorman said you need to send someone down here to remove this guy from the track.

REPORTER: Meanwhile, an F train ahead of the D on a parallel track was also stuck in the tunnel. Purchase College film student Jessica Brunetto was on that F train.

She happened to be shooting a short film in which the main character is afraid to ride the subways without a gas mask. Brunetto continued recording with her handheld camera while the train was stuck.

BRUNETTO: It was a pretty long time. We just kept getting told to be patient.

REPORTER: Brunetto’s video shows passengers waiting quietly. But then, after 20 or thirty minutes, there was a series of explosions.

EXPLOSION SOUNDS

The man on the track had thrown a piece of metal onto the third rail. Brunetto’s camera caught a bright orange flame sailing outside the train windows. And then, smoke.

F TRAIN PASSENGERS: Shut the window, smoke is coming. Yo shut the window, shut the window!

BRUNETTO: The car was filling with smoke. Pretty much everyone in my train car was trying to exit my car because the explosions were right next to us.

REPORTER: The conductor called out for passengers to move towards the front of the train.

F TRAIN CONDUCTOR: Ladies and gentlemen if possible please cover your noses, please cover your noses.

BRUNETTO: I don’t think anyone really knew what was going on. We weren’t really instructed by the MTA at all.

REPORTER: Conductor Charles Cummings says the scene was equally chaotic on his D train.

CUMMINGS: Where’s the fire department? Where’s the police? I don’t know who’s coming I don’t know who ain’t coming cause nobody’s talking to me on the radio.

REPORTER: There are guidelines for evacuating passengers. Train operators are supposed to get permission from a supervisor – unless it’s a life threatening emergency. That’s because the third rail has to be turned off so no one gets electrocuted. But when Cummings didn’t get any instructions from the transit control center, he says he and his motorman took matters into their own hands.

CUMMINGS: So we said look the emergency exit is right here, let’s start leading these people outside cause the smoke was really getting kind of bad.

REPORTER: They knew the explosion forced a power shutdown. They had seen the lights go off. Meanwhile, a worker on the tracks came to help the D train operators evacuate the passengers with his lantern. They were led to safety through an exit on Sixth Avenue. And then the F train was evacuated.

F TRAIN MOTORMAN: We have personnel over at emergency exit to assist you.

REPORTER: Jessica Brunetto’s video shows the passengers leaving. Another F train passenger, Lola Braverman, recalls being led out.

BRAVERMAN: It was dark, it was rocky, it wasn’t paved it was a very narrow catwalk just between the stations. I thought it was like walking on a brook, it was just a lot of rocks.

REPORTER: Firefighters were helping passengers climb out the stairway to Sixth Avenue. Brunetto says it was the first time she saw any emergency responders.

BRUNETTO: I did not see a fireman until I was off the train which was you know probably close to an hour if not more than that after the explosion.

REPORTER: While passengers were being evacuated at around 6:30, police arrested the suspect. Sergeant Sean Murphy was there.

MURPHY: We caught an individual with no shirt on, with black smoke all over his body. A couple of witnesses also pointed him out and two of my officers who came right behind me kind of crossed paths, and stopped him and people said that’s him, that’s him, they’d seen him coming out of the tunnel. Later we when we debriefed the gentleman he admitted he was trying to damage the trains.

REPORTER: Bonergy Quelal was caught almost an hour after he was first seen throwing debris on the subway tracks. He was charged with reckless endangerment and attempted murder. The Ecuadorian immigrant had been hospitalized numerous times for psychiatric illness. And the materials he threw in the subway tunnel? They had been left behind by track workers – in violation of transit procedures.

In some ways, the explosion at West Fourth Street was not unlike a terrorist attack. It was intentionally caused by one disturbed individual. It caused the evacuation of 1300 people. It involved about 100 firefighters, EMS, police and the mayor’s office of emergency management. Ultimately, their response was successful. There were only five minor injuries. But judging by WNYC’s interviews with witnesses and transit documents obtained in the course of our investigation, there were significant lapses in communication.

First, there was the delayed response. Quelal was throwing things on the subway tracks for almost 40 minutes before setting off the explosions. Kenneth Brown, Director of Risk Assessment and Fire Safety for New York City Transit, says police were called four times but did not respond.

BROWN: Basically we feel that had the police responded or had the individual been removed in a more timely manner obviously prior to him throwing something onto the track that caused the explosion, it would have just been a simple matter of cleaning the debris that was on the track and then the trains proceeding.

REPORTER: But the police department insists its officers did respond. They just went to the wrong station - on the orders of their own dispatchers. A spokesman admitted there was a mixup but he said police were later sent to the correct station.

The second communication breakdown involved the Fire Department. They were called by transit at 6:20 – a couple of minutes after the explosions. Most units went to the 6th Avenue tracks at West Fourth Street, where the D and F trains run. But other firefighters went to the 8th Avenue tracks and were almost killed by an oncoming train. Kenneth Brown of the Transit Authority says they didn’t realize the A, C and E trains had not been shut down.

BROWN: We were preparing to restore service to the 6th avenue line when we encountered fire dept personnel on the 8th avenue line and it was at that time that we had to remove power immediately and by doing that we stranded 3 additional trains.

REPORTER: Firefighters say communication problems like this are not uncommon. In the underground world of the subway system, it’s easy to get confused about which tracks are which – especially when they’re filled with smoke.

DISPATCHER: Twenty-eighth street to 7th avenue, smoke condition number 1 IRT subway, 28th and 7th avenue ...

REPORTER: Clearing this up is like a game of telephone. Firefighters depend on information from their own dispatchers to tell them exactly where to go and whether it’s safe to walk on a subway track. But the FDNY dispatchers get their information from transit control operators. And those transit controllers are in a room in Brooklyn.

CONTINUE: Battalion 7 this originally went out as rubbish, Engine 1 got there…

REPORTER: That process can lead to delays. Firefighters say they sometimes wait 20 or 30 minutes before a third rail is turned off because the process is complicated, and involves isolating the problem. During the Chambers Street fire in January, which disrupted A and C train service, firefighters waited an hour. Phil McCardle is a firefighter who specializes in hazardous materials. He says the system works because it prevents people from walking on live tracks. But there’s a downside.

McCARDLE: Every time that you delay especially for a large fire or a large event, the longer you have to delay getting power off the greater the incident can become, you know, the less lives you can save.

REPORTER: Firefighters have another communication problem in the subways. Their handheld radios don’t work well underground.

McCARDLE: We are virtually blind down in the subways. We’re deaf, dumb and blind.

REPORTER: Unlike transit workers and police, whose radios do work in the subways, firefighters rely mostly on walkie talkies with weaker signals. After the September 11th attacks in 2001, the fire department purchased more than a dozen portable radio units that are much more powerful, to boost communications in skyscrapers and in the subways. On February 29th of 2004, one of these units was brought to the scene at West Fourth Street.

But that wasn’t enough to prevent a third communication problem. When firefighters arrived, after the explosions, they assembled an incident command post at street level. A transit supervisor acted as a liaison. But she was using a radio that only worked in the subways. This meant she had to go back underground whenever fire officials on the street needed information about what was happening in the subway. Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Ronald Spadafora was on the scene.

SPADAFORA: Well it didn’t cause a delay in regards to us performing our work but we were worried about safety, we were worried about the danger of firefighter getting struck by a train that was our major concern as well as civilians getting struck by trains.

REPORTER: These communication problems at West Fourth Street DID lead to changes. During a major subway incident, a fire chief now DRIVES straight to the transit authority’s control center in Brooklyn in order to talk face-to-face with transit officials. It’s not exactly high tech but officials at both agencies say it's an improvement. Police say they’ve improved communication procedures. And transit supervisors now carry Nextel phones so they’re not entirely dependent on their radios. Other improvements are in the works, including a new 150 million dollar communication system that would finally allow police, fire and transit to talk to each other in the subways. That's scheduled to go online sometime next year.

But what about the delays experienced by riders and train operators on that chaotic day in February?

F TRAIN CONDUCTOR: “Please try to remain patient, police and fire department are on the way..

REPORTER: In her video, Jessica Brunetto captured the anger and frustration as her fellow F train passengers waited for almost 40 minutes to evacuate following the explosion.

WOMAN: They were moments away ten __ing minutes ago! BRUNETTO: When there are flames outside your window, you expect to exit as soon as possible.

REPORTER: Conductor Charles Cummings said the scene was similar on his D train. Without much guidance, he and his motorman relied largely on instinct and the training Cummings received when he started ten years ago.

CUMMINGS: My main concern was these people are freaking out. Someone has to be level headed and take control of the situation. And you’ve got all these people looking at you, you representing transit, you gotta help us you gotta get us out of here, don’t worry about it, calm down, listen to what we have to say.

REPORTER: The Transport Workers Union has complained loudly in recent months that the MTA doesn’t do enough emergency training for its employees. New York City Transit says it’s beefed up training for everyone in the past year. Kenneth Brown, the TA’s director of Risk Assessment and Fire Safety, also says train operators deserve praise for doing exactly what they were supposed to do when the fire broke out near West Fourth Street. They called the control center for help. And they moved their passengers away from the smoke.

BROWN: We don't evacuate until we really know what's going on all around because you could evacuate somebody into a worse situation.

REPORTER: But it’s worth noting that in its own review of the West Fourth Street explosion, nobody at the Transit Authority checked the one complete audio and video document of the incident: Jessica Brunetto’s videotape. They never asked to see it.

A recent report by the MTA's rider advocacy group found the agency needs to upgrade its technology to make sure transit staff can communciate with passengers, rescuers and each other during emergencies. The report, by the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, noted that some stations don't even have public address systems. The group’s executive director, Beverly Dolinsky, says the West Fourth Street incident is a glaring example of communication breakdowns.

DOLINSKY: It reveals that the system wasn’t working and that they were lucky. And that’s why we think every detail, you can’t leave out a single detail, it has to be what if? What if you can’t reach the command center? What if the police aren’t coming?

REPORTER: The MTA says it’s now conducting a full review of its emergency communication plans. Conductor Charles Cummings says he hopes the authority is taking this seriously after what he went through last year.

CUMMINGS: I think that was a wakeup call. I think that was a wakeup call. OK this happened and you had one person that could disrupt practically a whole transit system. What are you guys going to do to make it where that won’t happen again?

REPORTER: Transit riders are asking the same questions. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.

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Student film maker Jessica Brunetto captured the chaos following an explosion on 2/29/2004 while making a movie about a character who was afraid to travel without a gas mask.
» Watch a short video clip (View using Internet Explorer)