What we know and what we don’t about last week’s Federal Center SW explosion

Last week, after an explosion at Federal Center SW, someone at Metro’s Rail Operations Control Center denied Metro safety workers access to inspect the track. Also, while the explosion happened just before 7 am, the station didn’t shut down until the afternoon. This doesn’t reflect well on Metro’s safety culture, but we also don’t have all the details. Here’s what we know and what we don’t.

The details of the incident itself are that an insulator that holds up the third rail sparked, lit on fire, and then exploded, creating a fireball and sending scraps of porcelain and metal all over the platform. While video of the explosion is now public (video of the explosion starts at :50 in the linked video), Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld didn’t see it until late that day. While he then immediately ordered Federal Center SW to close, it’s alarming that it took that long.

What we know about the explosion

Eventually, a porcelain insulator caught fire and exploded at the Federal Center SW station. But before that, the first sign of trouble on the morning of the explosion was a 6:30 am report of smoke coming from the rear car of an Orange Line train, heading east to New Carrollton and passing through the downtown core. The train was investigated, then cleared to move out with just the one rear car closed off to the public.

A few minutes later, around 6:40, a small fire— likely the explosion— was reported at Federal Center SW. The Blue Line train behind the Orange Line one performed a track inspection from L’Enfant, saw nothing, and continued on.

After that, track personnel inspected the track at around 7 am. They received “foul time,” in which trains are stopped so they can hop down onto the tracks to inspect, and found at least one third rail-related issue. From there, they requested a second inspection (the FTA said this first one was “only a cursory inspection,” after which the track was given back to Central Control to be used by trains again).

It seems suspicious that an insulator within the station’s platform limits literally disintegrated and either nobody noticed, or the issue wasn’t thought to be severe enough to take the track out of service at that point in time. The inspectors requested that Metro’s power department personnel come and also inspect the 3rd rail.

After that, the personnel at the station for the second inspection were denied access to the track. At around 8:45 am, power department personnel arrived at the station, and requested similar foul time to get down on the trackbed. The power employees wer instructed to “landline Central,” or in other words, call the Rail Operations Control Center. Someone —we don’t know who— appears to have denied these personnel access to the track.

Three hours later, personnel were back out at the track. They performed their inspections and unscheduled repairs from 11:40am to 12:40pm. At around 4, Wiedefeld saw the video of the exploding insulator and ordered the Federal Center SW shutdown.

What we don’t know about the explosion

Aside from the issue of who denied power personnel access to the track, we also don’t know why. There are other questions, too:

• Who and when did Metro decide to pull the station video footage showing the exploding insulator?
• Was part of the reason for denying power department personnel access to the track it because it was being heavily used since it was morning rush at the time?
• What did Metro think the severity of the issue was, when the Power personnel were denied access? If they thought the issue was trivial, it may make sense they weren’t granted access.
• And, of course, there may be other facts and information of events that transpired. We don’t know what we don’t know.

If the second inspection of the track was denied because it would disrupt morning rush-hour service, then the ROCC personnel who made that decision need to go back and reorder their priorities. The pamphlet handed out at Tuesday’s meeting of all 650-odd Metro managers with Wiedefeld makes clear that “safety trumps service,” which is critical and must happen each and every day.