Dec 10th: During rush hour, on the Gallery-Place Chinatown Metro, I was injured while on an escalator at Metro. The escalator was stationary, people were walking up, then it suddenly started freewheeling backwards, it was going way to fast to just be running normally in reverse. People began screaming, as folks started piling up at the bottom. I was injured as I and others plummeted down for approximately 8 seconds. Stander-bys tried to hit the emergency brake- it did not work! We were all pretty hysterical and everyone started sobbing and trying to help people up, as a few elderly folk were sprawled out on top of each other- all were traumatized! I was taken to the emergency room.
I'm quite curious what the cause was? It seems that this can be pretty traumatic to experience something you're relying on for your safety; to fail this way. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, there are approximately 6,000 hospital emergency room treated injuries associated with escalator incidents annually nationwide. All I keep thinking about is that it could have been our daughter or my pregnant friends our parents on that nightmare of an escalator. The Washington Post ran a story and they are looking at this as a larger issue- how could there have been no signs stating the thing was a hazard! Why are they putting band-aids on these things! The employees of Metro said- "they have no money to get new ones so we just put band aids on it!?" wow! s-c-a-r-y
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...121102950.html?wprss=rss_metro