NYC safety trainer: "Workers should always still assume the rail is
'hot'"

April 27, 2004

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ate.html&tntemail0

Staying One Step Ahead of Disaster
By MICHAEL LUO, NYT

Inside a squat, light blue warehouse in Coney Island is a subway tunnel
where disasters happen.

The other day, the tunnel and two trains inside began filling with
smoke. The 50 or so people on board one of the trains calmly formed a
line to file out the back.

"Watch your head," said a beefy man stationed by the door, as people
descended one by one down a narrow stepladder to the roadbed.

When everyone had made it safely, the group turned around to do it
again.

It was all a charade, of course. The subway tunnel is actually an
elaborate mock-up, part of a training center that opened in 1997. The
smoke comes from a machine usually found on movie sets. Here, train
operators, conductors, station agents and other employees of the
nation's busiest mass transit system, the New York City subway, practice
for the worst.

Although the need to evacuate subway trains because of fires or other
problems has always been a part of travel underground, the training that
goes on here has taken on newfound importance in a jittery world of
orange alerts and terrorist threats.

"There is a higher sense of, 'Boy, I could be in this,' " said Rocco
Cortese, assistant vice president of training for New York City Transit.
"Everybody's starting to realize that."

Partly because of terrorism concerns, transit officials are planning to
offer the daylong fire safety and evacuation training sessions to more
workers and make those who have already gone through it do so more
often.

Train operators, conductors and station agents all get the training when
they start their jobs, but only train operators are required to go
through refresher courses every three years. Beginning May 1, officials
will make conductors do the same. They are also considering training car
cleaners, track workers and employees in other departments, in case they
need to help in an evacuation.

The measures are long overdue, according to leaders of Local 100 of the
Transport Workers Union, who have been pushing for more training.

"There can never be too much training, obviously, in today's world,
especially after what happened in Madrid, what happened in Tokyo, the
attacks on our city," said Jimmy Willis, a conductor and union official.
Mr. Willis, who said that he has been through the evacuation training
once in his 16 years on the job, supports putting employees through it
at least once a year.

Transit officials point out that they have been steadily expanding
training of all kinds, especially in recent years. Decades ago, safety
training was mostly informal, passed on from one worker to another.
During the 1980's, with the emergence of stricter standards from the
federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, training became
more formalized and centralized in a single department. Evacuation
training, however, was done out in a train yard, on an old subway car.

The opening of the training center represented a huge step forward,
allowing the transit agency to build in a realism it did not have
before. After Sept. 11, 2001, agency officials revamped an introductory
class for new employees to teach awareness of nuclear, biological and
chemical threats. And last year, officials also added a 40-hour
hazardous materials training course, again for designated workers.

The agency is trying to be methodical by making sure it has the
resources to sustain new programs so the additional training will be
effective, said Art Basley, senior director of safety training.

"You don't want to start doing something you can't see through," he
said.

In the evacuation training, the students start out in the classroom,
with an instructor going over procedures from a manual. Much time is
spent on keeping passengers calm. The manual reads: "Good, clear
communication to all involved is essential in controlling panic." Also:
"Keeping customers informed of the problem, using a clear, authoritative
voice and timely announcements will help keep panic to a minimum."

"You're really going to need to put on your acting faces," said Jim
Leckie, an instructor, to his students. "They're going to be looking for
an authoritative face."

Later, the students move inside the warehouse, where a pair of old
trains sit side by side. Mr. Leckie starts out by demonstrating how to
contact the subway system's control center from the emergency alarm
boxes that are mounted under blue lights along the tracks. A worker has
to pull a lever, which triggers a ticker-tape printout in the control
center that identifies the location of the box. Then, he or she has to
pick up the phone immediately and tell the desk superintendent to shut
off the power to the electrified third rail.

If the phone is missing or does not work, Mr. Leckie tells his class to
take the lever and "pull it a second time, pull it a third time." That
way, the control center will know it is not someone in the tunnel
pulling a prank.

Even after the power is cut, however, workers should always still assume
the rail is "hot," Mr. Leckie said, and try to keep riders away from it.
Mr. Leckie moves quickly on to discussing the evacuation of passengers
from the train to the roadbed. But this, he said, should be done only as
a last resort.

Again, he warned his students about panic.

"Panic inside the car is one thing," he said. "Panic on the roadbed is
another."

Next, the students practice a train-to-train evacuation. This is
normally the first choice in an emergency so that riders would not have
to plunge into the tunnel. Whenever possible, a rescue train would be
sent into the tunnel and line itself up alongside the train that needs
to be evacuated.

Mr. Leckie positions two students at the entrance of one car and two
students across the narrow gap in the other car and has them link arms
to form what he calls a "human banister." A yellow emergency device with
a stepladder on one side and a ramp on the other bridges the gap between
the trains.

Once again, the students line up to file out of the train. By now,
however, the smoke is thick, limiting visibility to less than 15 feet.
Suddenly, the lights go out. Several students turn on flashlights.

"I'm afraid of the dark," one man jokes.

At this point, Mr. Leckie pauses to talk to his students about what to
do if, for instance, a person in a wheelchair is on the train, since a
wheelchair cannot fit onto the emergency ramp.

"Our main concern is to evacuate as many people as possible, as quickly
and safely as possible," he said, telling his students to move the
handicapped person off to the side and provide assurances that "help is
on the way." The rider would probably have to wait for firefighters to
arrive.

In the darkness, Mr. Leckie walks his students through the last drill of
the day, what is known in transit parlance as "train-to-benchwall,"
meaning from the train to the narrow walkway that runs along the side of
subway tunnels.

He tells the transit workers to take their right hand and place it on
the shoulder of the person in front of them. Leave the other hand
available, he said, to grab hold of the railing. The hands on the
shoulders, he said, would help keep panic to a minimum. Like a conga
line, the group shuffles out of the train on cue.

"Are they sending help?" someone asks.

The group shuffles through the smoke down the catwalk, out a door and up
some steep steps to fresh air.

Just like that, the exercise is over. It took less than an hour.

Afterward, Ralph Boozer, 45, with 21 years on the job, said that he
would be ready if something happened. Two decades ago, he had to
evacuate 2,000 people on a packed train when a train in front of his
caught fire. Also, during the blackout last summer, he had to evacuate
his train because it was caught inside a tunnel.

But Glen Burnett, 52, another veteran train operator, worried about
overexcited passengers inciting panic. All it takes is one, he said, and
pandemonium follows.

On a train, the only people who are trained to handle most emergencies
are the conductor and the train operator, he said. "It's two against
2,000."

It is that kind of hysteria that cannot be replicated in any drill, said
O'Neal Barno, 40, another train operator. He is not sure if the short
class has prepared him.

"Hopefully, it does," he said. "But to be honest with you, I don't think
so."

The consensus among many transit workers, he said, is that a terrorist
attack against the subway system is inevitable. As a result, the classes
have changed markedly over the years.

"People are paying a little more attention now," he said, "just in
case."