This weekend a fire struck the NYC subway:
Two of the city’s subway lines – the A and the C – have been crippled and may not return to normal capacity for three to five years after a fire Sunday afternoon in a Lower Manhattan transit control room that was started by a homeless person trying to keep warm, officials said yesterday. The blaze, at the Chambers Street station used by the A and C lines, was described as doing the worst damage to subway infrastructure since the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It gutted a locked room that is no larger than a kitchen but that contains some 600 relays, switches and circuits that transmit vital information about train locations.
And now this in LA:
At least nine people died and hundreds were injured this morning when two commuter trains collided after one hit a car parked on the tracks in Glendale near Los Angeles, officials said. The death toll was expected to rise in what officials were calling the worst rail disaster in recent memory … At a joint news conference with Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton and Glendale Chief Randy G. Adams, Baca said the early investigation showed the vehicle was parked at a rail crossing and was hit by a south-bound commuter train. It then sideswiped a north-bound Metrolink train causing both trains to derail. One apparently hit a freight train, pushing it off of the tracks. Police said they were investigating the vehicle that was illegally stopped at the crossing.