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the staff of the Ridgewood blog
New York Penn Station, on Thursday, NJ Transit commuters experienced a nightmare scenario when their train lost power in a tunnel, leaving them stranded for nearly three hours without air conditioning. The incident unfolded when the train suffered a power disruption affecting multiple tracks, leading to a prolonged ordeal for passengers.
According to an NJ Transit spokesperson, the problem was compounded by the challenge of identifying the exact cause of the power failure. In an attempt to resolve the issue, a diesel-powered Amtrak train was ordered to tow the stranded train. However, as passengers waited in the sweltering heat, smoke began to fill the cars after they opened windows in a desperate bid for cooler air.
One frustrated rider summed up the situation, stating, “I understand that there are decades of infrastructure failures and neglect that have led to NJ Transit being the way it is and that no single person is to blame. But there’s no excuse for the complete lack of preparedness for an emergency. Something like this shouldn’t happen less than 1,000 feet away from the busiest train station in the country.”
Passengers shared their harrowing experience on social media. One Reddit user recounted, “We were stuck in the tunnel for 2 hours and 40 minutes with no AC. Everything was fine at first, I’ve been on stuck trains before, and I was expecting maybe a half-hour of inconvenience. First, the update was that they were trying to fix the power. Then maybe 40 minutes in, there was an announcement that they couldn’t fix it and they would bring a rescue engine to tow us back to Penn. We would be moving ‘hopefully in a few minutes.’ They repeated this announcement a few more times over the next hour, and then for the last hour, radio silence.”
The situation deteriorated as the train’s interior grew increasingly hotter. “No clue what the actual temperature was, but I’m a healthy person in my 20s and I was definitely experiencing symptoms of heat stroke. My head was killing me, I was having difficulty with my coordination, and I felt like I was on the verge of passing out. I can only imagine what the older passengers or people with preexisting conditions were dealing with,” the passenger wrote. “The last 40ish minutes were the worst. I believe they brought a diesel engine to try to tow our train, but it wasn’t working, so it just sat there filling the tunnel with fumes. I’m still not feeling great this morning.”
The ordeal has raised serious questions about NJ Transit’s emergency preparedness. “It’s incomprehensible to me that NJ Transit has no plan in place to evacuate passengers in situations like this. According to the sign on the wall of the tunnel, we were only 818 feet from Penn Station. I could clearly see an emergency exit staircase right next to the train. Is there really no way the police could have organized some sort of evacuation? I understand it’s probably not safe to have passengers in the tunnel, but remaining on the train was definitely not safe either. At a bare minimum, there had to be a way they could have brought water out to the people on the train.”
The incident has sparked widespread frustration and calls for NJ Transit to improve its response to emergencies to prevent future incidents like this from occurring.
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Don’t worry the democrats are handling it. Murphy on vacation!
Secret Service-level weaponized incompetence, amounting either to reckless disregard for human life, or a sick, psychotic desire for mayhem and chaos in the streets.
Coming to a donkey party-ruled neighborhood near you.
Problem –> Reaction –> Solution
Might have been on purpose ? I didn’t even think those windows were able to be opened …… diesel fumes pouring in…strange. It is inconceivable that an emergency plan was not in place, and why weren’t they evacuated when an emergency exit was within reach ? If the power was off at that moment why would the 3rd rail be a concern then ? This event reeks of an experiment to me.