June 22nd DC Metro Crash

You've probably heard by now about the horrible DC metro crash that happened last night. I heard about it when I was walking home from the gym; my roommate texted me to see if I was okay (he didn't realize I don't ride the red line to work).

It was a pretty terrifying crash, with the fatality number continuing to creep up (so far nine people have been killed). For me this tragedy hits close to home because I commute on the metro every single weekday and often on the weekends. I know that metro is ridiculously safer than driving (the last major accident metro had was in 2004), but its still frightening to think about.

I've been following the coverage on the Washington Post, but also on DCist (which I prefer). DCist has updates that are easier to follow, and also a more intimate tone. It's like your friend is telling you the news while saying, "Can you believe this happened in our neighborhood?"

Here are some of the recent updates from DCist:

- FEMS, Metro Trade Barbs on Crash Communication

- Death Toll Back Up to Nine, Five Bodies Removed From Wreckage

- NTSB Points Finger at Metro

- METRO eAlerts Not Well Equipped to Deal With Fatal Crashes

- Obama Statement on Deadly Metro Crash

- Morning Roundup: Deadliest Crash in Metro History

But for as frightening as this story is, it's tempered by the beautiful stories of courage and decency that this crisis elicited. Like from this one man the Post interviewed:

Martin Griffith, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, also was inside the train that was struck. Afterward, he said, "I looked out the window. I looked up. I could see the wreckage hanging over the door. There was a woman there, too, trying to hang on."

He hit the emergency release and opened the door out onto the track. "That's when I realized people had been ejected out. They were lying on the ground next to the car," Griffith said.

He said he helped one woman who had fallen near the electrified third rail, collecting other passenger's T-shirts to stanch her bleeding.

After the power to the live rail was turned off and rescuers reached her, Griffith said, he found a teenage girl. He said it wasn't clear whether she had been ejected from the train that hit his or had climbed out on her own. Her legs looked broken, Griffith said, and he sat with her while firefighters used the jaws of life to open the doors on a nearby train so she could be taken to an ambulance.

"She said, 'Tell my boyfriend . . .' " Griffith said, and then he cut her off. "You tell him yourself. You're breathing. You can see me. You don't need to give me any last messages."

He then used her cellphone to call her mother. Ernice Beasly picked up: The injured girl was her daughter Lanice, 14. Later, she said that her daughter was at the hospital, unconscious and badly cut but alive. She said of Griffith: "Thank the Lord for him."

Griffith then walked to the Fort Totten Station and took the Metro home to Northern Virginia, still wearing the black pants and white dress shirt he'd had on at the crash scene.

"People were looking at me strange," he said. "I had blood all over me, none of it my own."

It's always inspiring to hear about people who rise to the occasion when dealing with catastrophes and life threatening situations. I follow a blog by Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable, a book that looks at human behavior in extreme situations. When talking about the DC metro crash she says, "As is so often the case in disasters, people did remarkable things for one another. Survivors [of the DC crash] report fear, confusion and kindness--but not panic."

My heart goes out to the families of those who were killed, and for all of those who had to experience this yesterday.