AN AUSTRALIAN COMMUTER TRAIN WAS FORCED TO STOP and evacuate approximately 50 passengers early Wednesday morning when the undercarriage of one of the coaches started burning.
The METRO regional commuter line in Victoria, Australia, is an electric line and a late-night train’s pantograph (the device that rides under the electric wire and carries the current down to the train’s motor) snagged the transmission line, pulling it down where it became tangled between two coaches. The sudden short-circuit sent a power surge through the motors and started a fire underneath the car.
This photo taken on a stranded passenger’s cellphone
shows smoke pouring from the affected railcar.
(HWT Image library)
The train came to a halt and the passengers were safely evacuated without any encouragement needed.
THE FRENCH RAILROAD SNCF ran a regularly scheduled in-house disaster drill Tuesday simulating a major incident with one of their ultra-high-speed TGV trains.
Part of the practice exercise involves the public relations department who are responsible for dissemination of the public information. Unfortunately, the faux press release was posted on their website instead of the training page and panicked relatives all over the country were greeted with:
An explosion of unknown origin occurred at 8am today aboard TGV1234, close to Macon.“The first estimates of the fire service say 102 people died and another 380 were injured. All the victims were evacuated to hospitals in Macon.
“Due to the dramatic events today on TGV1234, our site will only be publishing essential information. Thank you for your understanding.
It didn’t take long for the word to get back to HQ and the notice was quickly removed. “On March 16th, just before 12.00, an error appeared on the sncf.com site relaying information about an accident. This never took place,” the company said, adding that an investigation would seek to find out what had gone wrong as they were busily calming down distraught relatives who had been checking on their loved-one’s arrival schedules.
This tv news video shows the renegade web posting. Our friends in Quebec will also enjoy the report:
A VACANT PASSENGER TRAIN STORED OUTSIDE THE MILAN, Italy, railroad station burned Tuesday morning causing major disruptions to rail traffic and high damages.
The string of passenger cars were all old coaches that had been taken out of service and scheduled to be scrapped. For some reason, they were stored just outside the terminal shed alongside the operating trackage and had been regularly used by illegal immigrants as overnight sleeping accommodations. This home video shows the magnitude of the fire and the challenge to the firefighters:
The fire began shortly after midnight Tuesday morning and rapidly spread through the entire train. As railroad employees worked to remove all the other nearby cars that are in use, the fire spread to another train of six cars and caused significant damage.
This video shows the other trains being removed by some rather courageous engineers as the flames were threatening them:
So far there is no further information available, but the story will be updated if and when we receive any.
A RAILROAD TRESTLE LEADING TO THE BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, port facility caught on fire late Monday afternoon and trapped a train carrying a load of brand-new Mercedes Benz automobiles and another 30 cars filled with grain. The autos were being transported from the M-B factory in Vance, Alabama, to the intermodal shipping facility in Brunswick to be exported overseas.
The wood trestle crosses a marsh and is the only rail link to the port. The fire spread up onto the train and destroyed two railcars filled with 16 M-B autos that were worth at least $50,000 each. The bulk of the fire damage was to the train with about $800,000 loss from the autos. The train had been stopped on the trestle while some switching activity was taking place and when the fire started encroaching on the railcars, the switchmen were able to separate the grain cars from the car carriers and tow them off of the trestle.
Firefighters had to hand-lay supply lines down the trestle to reach the fire, but they were able to prevent it from spreading beyond the two involved cars to the rest of the auto loads. The fire that started around 2:30 pm was out by 4:00. Repair work is continuing non-stop on the trestle and they expect to be able to resume rail traffic by late this afternoon (Wednesday).
The Jacksonville (Florida) Times-Union has the latest REPORT.
It was just last month, on February 20, that we were talking on the Morning Lineup (HERE) about how some jurisdictions are abusing their mutual aid agreements by shutting down fire companies and reducing manpower, then relying on the mutual aid departments to pick up the slack on fire calls. One of the examples that we pointed out was the city of Milwaukee which is doing that very thing, bringing in neighboring departments to cover for the MFD’s failure to provide adequate resources of their own.
A more bizarre stunt came just a few days before that when the looney mayor of North Providence, Rhode Island, arbitrarily eliminated the position of Fire Chief. He has delegated the shift battalian chiefs to run the department on a rotation based on their shift work, and if a major fire occurs the city will rely on a fire chief from another jurisdiction coming on over to run the show. (see Firegeezer report HERE.) We predicted on the 20th, “…it shows how far some desparate politicians are willing to go in order to avoid taking proper fiscal responsibility for their own municipalities. This is just the sort of thing that can destroy the entire mutual aid concept, setting fire and rescue service back 50 years.”
Well, it took less than a month for our prediction to come true. On Monday, March 15, the Daytona Beach, Florida, Fire Chief Gary Hughes said that he is no longer going to send city fire units into Volusia County to respond to fires. Daytona Beach and Volusia County have/had a “nearest unit” mutual aid pact, but the city is accusing the county of doing just what we said before, closing stations and reducing the manpower on units below the recommended safe minimum. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported yesterday:
County officials have “taken their responses dangerously backwards,” the chief said.
Hughes said Daytona Beach firefighters are at risk when they don’t have enough help on a scene outside city limits, and Daytona Beach residents are in jeopardy when their firefighters are tied up on a call outside the city.
In a Feb. 23 letter to the county, Hughes said he’ll send his units “only after all available county resources have been exhausted and only if we have the resources to send.” He added in the letter that “… we will not commit resources to any incident if there are not sufficient personnel on scene to allow for firefighter safety and especially if there is not a formal command structure in place.”
It is obvious that the city is fed up with the growing burden on them to cover for the county’s lack of providing the basic fire protection themselves and shifting the expense to the city’s good will. Read the full article HERE to get the complete story and the county’s response.
WOFL-TV Ch. 35 Orlando interviewed Chief Hughes and filed this video report:
I will reiterate that this is not typical because most municipalities have been judicious and methodical in their compensating for the economic downturn. But there are some places like North Providence, Milwaukee, and Volusia County who think nothing of using their neighbors as stooges to make up for their own failings. Watch out for something like this happening around you and let us know if you see any other municipalities trying this stunt.
We’d better handle our own responsibility here and get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get the coffee started (and it won’t come out green).
It was just last month, on February 20, that we were talking on the Morning Lineup (
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