Episode 379: Best of Both Badges: 1995 Williamsburg Subway Crash

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Mike Did You Even? Podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Glow. You're listening to

(01:02):
the best the Brigs interviews with the Ft and Ys
a week.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
When civilians need help, they call the police. When the
police need help, they call the emergency service unit.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
These emergency service workers are being credited with saving a
woman's life.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Were cops in full combat regalia?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, and then there are reports of an explosive ho

(01:54):
It's only the second time we've used that introduction here
in the program, but it's nice to do so. It
merges both Again, if you look at the backbones of
this show, certainly best of the bravest interviews with the
Ft and Wise Elite is one and another one has
certainly been the ement inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit.
And on that note, we will give you back everybody
to this special edition of the program, episode three hundred

(02:15):
and seventy nine of the Mike DENUEVN Podcast if you
haven't checked out the previous episode, that was a volume
of the event, and that was volume fifty four with
Glenn Daily, who spent a few years in the SU
eighty six to eighty nine, stayed in Special Operations, came
back later on in nineteen ninety three, and was there
until two thousand and four, working in the aviation unit
as both the sergeant and later lieutenant. So very interesting guy,

(02:37):
still teaching and still flying in the private sector. So
interesting to hear his stories over the years of all
that he did in NYPDSOD. As you guys know, I'm
a nerd for history of yesteryear, especially as it pertains
to New York City emergency services. So you may remember
for the last edition of the show where we did
the best of both badges we profiled in nineteen ninety
one Union Square derailment. Well, tonight we're going to stay

(02:58):
in line with the railroad urgency theme and responses to
it with something that occurred a few years later in
nineteen ninety five. So I appreciate all you tune and in,
and I appreciate seeing it as always in the chat
with one of a couple ads. We'll get into it
as we consider tonight Williamsburg Subway crash of June of
ninety five. But first things first, like I said, a
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oh eight nine one seven seventy six ninety seven. As always,
he'll be back on the show in a couple months
as we dive into another incident that occurred in ninety five.

(05:06):
More than that, as we get closer you know the
deal by now. Of course, one of the backbones behind
helping me create Tales from the Boom Room or Bomb
Squad mini series retired Arson Explosion Squad Detective Bill Ryan
and the Ryan Investigative, The Mikey New Haven Podcast is
proudly sponsored and supported by the Ryan Investigative Group. If
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if you need a PI, look no further than Bill
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sponsor of the Mike the New Haven podcast. To train,
One death, fifty four injuries. What am I talking about?
Early morning, June fifth, nineteen ninety five, two subway trains
collide on the Williamsburg Bridge out in Brooklyn, leaving one
motorman dead and more than fifty passengers injured. It was

(06:11):
a disaster that tested the limits the coordination between New
York City's emergency services and transit system wasn't the first one,
of course, we had when earlier in nineteen ninety one.
It reared its ugly head again on this summer day
in ninety five, but it approved the strength, of course,
and when there's proper insect coordination. We had EMS at
the time separate from the FD and WY. This is
a year before the merger the Ft and Why, of course,
and the NYPD Emergency Service Unit this is right after

(06:34):
the merger the Transit Housing and Housing Police forces into
the NYPD, respectively, and joining me tonight for what is
another edition of the best of both badgers or two
of the guys you were there. On one hand, we
have former New York City EMS Special Operations Division Emergency
Specialist Chris Ebden returning to the program and also former
NYPD retired NYPD Emergency Service Unit officer primarily out of

(06:54):
Truck three in the Bronx, Jose Gara. So both of
these gentlemen are with me tonight again. Good to see
you both against a while.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Good to see you.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh, thanks for making the time. Like I said, I
appreciate you guys making the time to dive into an
incident like this. So I'm going to start with you, Chris.
When the job came over the air, this is like
right after six o'clock in the morning. Tell me where
you were when the job came in.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
I had just gotten finished with a night tour tour
one with I was on the original Hastac Unit.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
It had just been.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Created and implemented only months before. And basically, so this
was one of our first larger incidents that we responded to.
And basically I had just come in to our.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
Base and.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Literally we did our hand off with our tour two guys,
the day crew, and this call dropped, and I was,
uh saying to myself, man, not, you know, you guys go.
You know, we've everything, you know, we gassed it up,
it's ready to go.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
You're good to go. Just throw your stuff on and go.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
And uh and that was great, And I was like, oh, man,
you know, it's one of those things where you you
kind of wish you could go because you've, you know,
you've got all this training and you just kind of,
you know, kind of want to be there to try
to help, right.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
You know, make make a make a make a little
difference there, I guess.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
And so I was kind of dejected through my stuff
in my locker, getting ready to go home and all
that stuff, and our chief chief curR uh came down
and uh he said, you want to go, I need
a scribe or an aid whatever.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
Uh aid I believe he.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Said, And uh, of course I threw my stuff in
his car and uh we went over there at warp
speed and he assumed command and we.

Speaker 4 (08:59):
We basically that's how we got there anyway.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
So I know the tours on the ESU and the
things are as it is for really the whole police
department eight to four, four to twelve, twelve to eight
that morning. Were you coming in for the tour or
three truck or were you in another truck that day?

Speaker 5 (09:16):
I was I was a three truck, but I was
flying to one truck that day.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (09:20):
So what ended up happening is when I heard the
job come over, I'm like, I'm going I got to
be there anyway because I was going to be in
their boycott. So I responded directly from three truck to
the scene. I went up with the one truck in
guys from eight truck.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Okay. So getting down there again, it's a large scale
scene and you're trying to get a lay of the
land too, because you don't know, I mean, thankfully, one
fatality is too many. Obviously you prefer that nobody dies
in something like this, but considering how it looked, you
would think there would have been a lot more So.
What was the especially because you were near a Commander Chris,
what was the initial information that you were that you
and Chief Kerr were getting at that time?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, it was pretty spotty at best. You know, multiple calls,
the nine to one one uh. Basically, uh, early on
they transmitted, uh, the uh the signal for a mass
transit incident. So of course that brings you know, an

(10:15):
awful lot of uh of cavalry coming at one time.
The first unit's on scene.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
They they basically said, it's on the Brooklyn side of.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
The bridge, and basically they had one train that had
rear ended another train.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
They at first thought.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
I believe that it was a head on collision, and
of course it turned out later it was a uh,
you know, a stop train. You know, the M train
had stopped on the tracks for a for a work
train and then the the jay hit it. Anyway, uh

(10:56):
so multiple injuries.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
We uh.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
The problem was access uh to the train itself, because
it's not level with the roadway. So our guys who
first got there, of course they didn't have ladders, and
to get to the there's a a walkway at.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
The train.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Level, the train track level, and uh so they had
to get up there. And you know people of course,
you know, uh multiple you know, there's there are multiple cars.
It's just a lot to take in, you know, when
you're the first arriving unit to to try to triage
and then and give us. We called it a twelve

(11:43):
ten twelve a report, and so it we weren't getting.

Speaker 5 (11:49):
A whole lot.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Of of excellent information. So we're on the way. We
were discussing, you know, a couple of things, and uh
like one of the things was that we were going
to age on both sides of of the bridge. And
of course PD was awesome because highway was sent right away.

(12:10):
And of course, if if there's anybody who can rearrange
traffic routes its highway, they can, you know, we can
do counterflow all that kind of stuff. They were excellent
and that really helped us. And uh so basically it
took it took a few minutes before we could really

(12:31):
get a good idea. And then once we got there
obviously you know, and could see with our own eyes
and then actually start uh discussing with es U or
Fidney was there with rescue obviously, you know, we started
getting to see what was going on and start to actually,

(12:52):
you know, implement a good plan. Obviously, the the motorman
was DA so he wasn't a transport, but we did
have a couple of major injuries or critical I guess,
and then we had an awful lot of walking wounded.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
And I'll get back to Jose in a moment, because
you were talking about that just before we came on.
The are a lot of aids as you mentioned, but
just to kind of lay the foundation for what these
guys were responding to that morning, it says here, of course,
approximately like we said earlier, just after six am, six twelve,
to be exact, an M train, as you said Chris
was running west Brown across the Williamsburg Bridge, heading towards
Manhattan when the motorman encountered a red signal and stopped

(13:35):
the train as he was supposed to do. The M
train had been forced to stop because an unscheduled work
train was directly in front of it at six p't
eighteen am. The J train was running at full speed
along the williamsburgs Williamsburg Bridge as Brooklyn approach. It ran
several yellow and red signals before running into the back
of the stationary M train. The rear end collision killed

(13:57):
Leyton Gibson the J trains, who had been a subway
motorman for fourteen years. Injuries in total were fifty four,
including one who was critical. The two trains were carrying
a combined total of two hundred passengers at the time.
And like I said, it's still fresh in the minds
of everybody what had happened in the Union Square to
Ralment just four years prior to this, in nineteen ninety one.
When you got there, Jose who was the SU's point

(14:19):
man at the time, was it a sergeant lieutenant?

Speaker 5 (14:22):
I believe it was sergeant laughting from one truck, because
this is again this was in between the beginning of
the day tour, and he also had the leftover from
the midnight because the end of two or eight o'clock
and the day tour stought at seven. So we had
enough guys both from one truck and from a truck.
And I guess some other six truck maybe, but there

(14:44):
was enough ESU. The main issue they were dealing with
was the motorman was trapped. Clearly he was dead and
you know, they had to work to get him out.
So we basically just wanted to get into doing a
quick evacuation of the so called walking wounded and those
who were not injured.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
But again it was precarious.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
With you, it was like a different level.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
The train was.

Speaker 5 (15:07):
Hired in the roadway and in between if Gotha b
fell in between that you only had a little bit
of bridge and the East River is where you would
end up. So it was very difficult to get these
people to move from one location to another without having
another injury on top of the moving the injured. So
what we ended up doing was.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Audio cut out there, Jose.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
So while we came here and I can, I can
let you know that we were we were having to
use ladders to get them from that uh that's that
train level down to uh the roadway. And needless to say,
it was you know, like you said, it's very precarious.
And then of course there were some people who were
kind of, you know, a little scared of heights, you know, it.

(16:00):
It was, it was, it was difficult for for your
normal civilian.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Still can't hear you, unfortunately, And I'll just share an
image to Chris the tracks in question. This is near
the general area these guys had to deal with at
the time, So this is what the situation looked like.
I'll find it here momentarily.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yeah, you had a pretty good shot, yeah, by the area.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, so and then of course go ahead, sorry, yeah,
okay you guys, Yeah, you're back now, so I'll get
back to you the moment, Chris, a pick up where
you left off was that you're fine.

Speaker 6 (16:36):
Well, we was using the ladders to put the ones
who couldn't move first. You know, you have to obviously
neck and back stabilization, do a triage who had to
go first before the others, and then our job was basically, yeah,
getting them onto a ladder and then lowering it or
going across because there's actually different levels. That train was

(16:57):
sort of like an arch because it was headed it
was headed down towards the Brooklyn side, and one part
of the train was lower than the other, so it
was sometimes it was lowering the patient or putting the
patient up, but there was always a space it was
never equal. There was a little parapet where you could
walk along the train, but it was narrow. It was
I would say maybe three feet wide, if that right. No,

(17:22):
it's just very precarious. You have to watch your step.
And of course there is chaos, there is some panic.
And then of course I mean there was like you
see in that photo. You have MTA employees, you have
fd N, y E MS, you have police ESU. So
everybody is doing their job. The MTA guys obviously, their
concern is, you know, how do we get this train

(17:42):
out of here? Except that's all they care about is
getting that train going no matter what. And and again
it was it was a rough scene. I mean that
train went into that other train a good maybe five
or six feet you know, impaled into it and almost
raising up. One of them was raised off the carriage
of the train. So that train was not stable either.

(18:05):
So that was a concern.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
And before I throw it back to you, Chris, just
in the other photo that I just showed of the
train tracks in question, on a normal day, there's no
good place and I'm not saying this to be humorous,
there's no good place to have a train collision. You'd
rather it not happen to begin with. But if there
was ever a horrible, more for lack of a better
way to word it, worst place to have a train collision,
it would be in this area. Because this photo alone,

(18:27):
it's precarious, Like you said, it's narrow, it's complex to
get in there for rescue efforts. So as if this
situation wasn't daunting enough talking about it being above street
level on a bridge type scenario, looking at the photo
right here, just to get to it, that's almost you know,
that's just as much a hassle as making the rescues
in it of itself. So you know, encountering something like that, Chris,

(18:51):
you know, I imagine just getting there and then of course
getting a lay of the land from the MTA and whatnot,
just to get into position was a challenge.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
So yeah, that is absolutely correct. Like you said, the
ladders having to be used, you know, the the civilians
not being uh you know, some not being terribly uh
uh nimble per se. Uh some weren't, you know, some
were a little you know, scare of the heights, scare

(19:19):
of the fact that you know, if you look down
in between there you could see the water below. I
mean it it had to be a uh you know,
it had to be a bit of a problem for
some people, but I mean, needless to say, uh, I
think all the the services worked very well together on

(19:39):
that particular job.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
I think it was it was.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
For such a large scale and such a potentially dangerous
you know, even after the incident, you know there was
still danger uh, a dangerous scenario. I think I think
everybody did very well and I personally was impressed.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
I mean you're talking and we have for those of
you that are watching on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn or x
you could see it here I'm showing it. You have
a coordinated effort right there, police officers, firefighters, ems involved
in removing a victim. Because you have with an MCI
like this, levels of staging and anybody that's read an
EMT book knows what those levels of staging are. You
have one black tag, which is the motorman, but then

(20:28):
you have everybody else. And what's nice about this is
much like the FD and Y has their extrication tools.
At a job like this, I imagine it's in Brooklyn,
you're going to get rescue too. You're also going to
get rescue one coming from Manhattan, so you know they
got the cutters and the spreaders, as does ESU. How
long and I don't transit rescue transit. Well this is
right after the merger, so they were they we'll merge

(20:49):
by then. Yeah, they had just merged. So how long
would you say, Jose, because I don't I know you
were helping on the EMS side of things. We have
a picture here, it's not graphic. We wouldn't show that.
Did it take to get the motorman?

Speaker 6 (21:01):
Actually it was under half an hour, which which is okay,
that's a long time, but you think it would be
more right.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
No, it was.

Speaker 6 (21:09):
Again, you're not worried about the patient because the patient
is deceased, so you're not adding any discomfort to a
dead person. So that you had that working for you. Uh,
And it was just a matter of just cutting around
him until he was loose enough to put him into
a Stokes basket and remove to the to bellevue. So
in that regards it, it wasn't that hard of an extrication.

(21:33):
I mean, it's I expect it to be a lot longer.
But again we're talking not to two down horn. But
if you're talking in the es U or rescue and
it's something it's part of the job, and we get
it done. I mean, I think the bigger problem was
to evacuate all the civilians that were on the train,
because you had the walking wounder, you have people who
could not move, and then you had the ones who

(21:55):
didn't want.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
To move because of fear.

Speaker 6 (21:57):
It was if you're afraid of heights, that was a
very precarious place to be and then be asked to
walk down a ladder. So you know, you needed personnel
to help these people walk down this ladder and then
walk them across to this sidewalk area and then to
transport them, you know, via ambulance. So that was more

(22:18):
of our workout than the actual extrication, I mean, because
again you were educating a dead body with the knowing
that you have to respect that it is a crime scene. Yeah,
so there's there's there's the process that now changes. You know,
you want to preserve the accident scene for the investigation
to follow.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
So so we had that.

Speaker 6 (22:40):
You know, as police officers, we always have to think
about the fact that, you know, we don't want to
disturb or disturb too much of a crime scene because
there's an investigation to find out what happened here. Trains
don't Trains aren't supposed to collide, you know, So it
was the National Transportation Safety grow I believe it has
jurisdiction over that. And but I mean time young YPD
detectives are gonna, you know, come to some sort of

(23:03):
conclusion of.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
What happened as well. They should before I get back
to you, Chris, go ahead, No.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
And it's also the fact that you want to make
sure this is an accent and not an act of
terrorism with something else. But that's always in the back
of our mind. You know, trains don't normally collide like this,
so what happened. So we'll still have a part of
us it's on guard while we're doing a rescue. That
that other hat that we wear, that tactical hat, doesn't
come off. It's just you know, put on standby. So yeah,

(23:31):
we had guys that were on stand by in case
this was something that you know, was not foreseen. It
could be the worst case scenario, which thank god, it
didn't turn out to be. But there was a lot
going on. There was everybody, and that's why I guess
everybody worked together, because everybody had their own job to do.
And you know, there wasn't a pissing match so to
speak over you know, who's got what jurisdiction and was that.

(23:52):
You know, at the end of the day, let's get
the aidges out of here and get them to the
hospital and then you know, just secure the scene. But
it was a really rough place to work because that
train was kind of teetering. It kind of moved a
little too much for my for my for for my liking,
you know, because there's someone was off the off the
carriage that carries the train, so there was a little

(24:12):
movement on certain parts of the train. And of course
you're always you're always gonna run into somebody who's extremely
overweight of fragiley. Gotta get them down those stairs, you know,
And and you couldn't use the the stairs, the stairschair,
the stair chair, you couldn't use that for any dates.
So they all had to be lowered in soakes baskets.
So it was it was it was a workout.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
And that's the collision, you know. So that's what you
guys were working with.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
And what I wanted to ask you and Chris, you
can start and of course you can chime in. Notice
the date I mentioned, June fifth. Was it hot out
at this time? Which adds to it or not?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Really?

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Do you remember?

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I don't remember being hot?

Speaker 6 (24:50):
Okay, no, early, it's early early in the morning too.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
You're up on the Bridge're getting a nice breeze up there. Yeah.
So in the tunnel nothing A little bit a different story.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, gosh, yeah, you were.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
There in ninety one, Chris. So you remember that's a
lot of guys got fatigued and had to go off
for heat exhaustion. Remember Patty Pogan talking about that when
he was talking about that job. So at least it
wasn't on a tunnel, even though there were problems with
this one too, of course, at least it's not underground.
It kind of makes things a little bit easier, just
before I get into the EMS component of it too.
Further notes on this to Williamsburg crash to your point

(25:25):
about the NTSB Jose was the fourth major crash nearly
as many years. Immediately afterwards, the NTSB announced it would
investigate the incident, and their findings were that the crash
had occurred because Gibson had been fatigued. He had been
near the end of an eight hour overnight when and
that'll do it. When the crash occurred, his blood had
tested negative for drugs and alcohol. Unlike the monorman in
ninety one who was drunk, this guy was stone cold sober.

(25:48):
He was just unfortunate, really really tired, and the NTSB
found there were no other major distractions at the time,
including loud noise from passengers. Witnesses on the j train
stated that the train consists had been breakingtly, have been
breaking rather abruptly, and had narrowly avoided another collision at
Attract junctional from Myrtle Avenue, four stations before the site
of the collision. Gibson was not known as a particularly

(26:10):
bad driver, and it's fourteen years of operating trains he'd
only received three minor operating violations for failing to align
the train with the platform. So just a very sad
story from the standpoint. This guy was working hard, you know,
nothing wrong with him. He wasn't drunk, wasn't bad at
his job, wasn't on alcohol or anything like that. Just
really really tired and his tired and has ended up
tragically costing him his life. Now, what's worth noting here

(26:32):
is new York City EMS isn't the only ambulance corps here, Chris,
I imagine you got a lot of other responding cours too,
on the coordation with them, if any.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
So you know, obviously you know that there are volunteer
ambulance cores, and there's a couple in Brooklyn. Actually I
do not know or I don't remember right off hand
if either are any of them actually you know, respond
to the job. But they they're on our MARS system

(27:03):
or you know, what used to be the MARS system.
I'm not sure if that's still in operation, but it's
mutual Aid Response system, I believe it is. But they've
got communications with our dispatchers so that we can, you know,
we can you know, tell them best access, egress, what
hospitals are open, whatever. So I don't know about voluntary

(27:28):
hospital I'm sure if some voluntary hospitals did. Those are
the difference being volunteers are voluntary ambulance corps. Voluntary hospitals
are the ambulances run by hospitals that put out a
couple of trucks in their neighborhood to service nine to
one one in their districts.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
And.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Kind of like Long Island college probably would have zipped
over there. I mean, you know, there's there are a few,
but you know.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
To tell you the truth, a lot of a lot
of the Catholic hospitals had their own ambulances.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, oh yeah, yeah
absolutely and in all the boroughs.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Uh Mary Immaculate and Queens was one that that was
that was very very good service.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
I worked with them a lot when I was in
Queen's but.

Speaker 6 (28:23):
Uh, anyway, I worked for Saint John's back in the day.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Oh my gosh, that's that's awesome. Yea on the boulevard.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Sure, sure, no, no, no, no, that's I was.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yeah anyway, uh yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
So unfortunately, I don't recall exactly how many voluntary hospitals
or if any if any of the volunteers ended up there.
But just like anybody else, if they're on our system,
they know how we work, they know our chain of command,
and there they fought all our chain of command and

(29:01):
they all have to have radios on our system. Even
prior to uh, you know, to the the big issue
with communications at nine to eleven. Uh, they always were, uh.
Part of the agreements for any of them operating was

(29:21):
if you want to operate on the nine U nine
to one one system, have our communications and and uh
so we can all talk to each other, and uh,
you know, and for for this particular reason, I mean,
you have an m C I you know, we don't
want everybody to go. Some people may need to be
uh remain in a district to uh to cover other

(29:43):
nine one one calls that come in. Anyway, the other
thing that was kind of interesting with this particular job was, uh,
we had so many patients that we were transporting out.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
We had to.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Uh find out what hospitals were open at the time.
And when I say open, I mean everybody's open, but
you know who's receiving and who's requesting diversion. So then
we had to figure out, okay, what trauma centers are
good to go right now and then which luckily we
didn't need much in a way of the trauma centers.

(30:22):
But then again, we also didn't want to innundate inundate
one particular burrow or one particular hospital obviously, so we
had to kind of manage, uh, you know, where the
guys where the where the people went. And besides ambulances,
we also used a transit one transit bus to carry

(30:43):
the absolute walking wounded that were just basic I.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
Want, I don't want to say booboos, but you.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Know, suitable lacerations, things that were that didn't require some
of us monitoring them or whatever.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
And of course they were transported with paramedics in the bus.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
It wasn't like they were you know, abandoned or anything, but.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
But yeah, they were.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
They were taken to a couple of different hospitals. And
it's interesting. It was a very interesting call. And I'm
sure one that that they still use for police fire
and DMS for examples and and you know, in in
training and stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Now I wanted to go back to something because you
brought up an interesting point earlier, Jose, where the terrorism
angle wasn't even something I thought about, but to put
in the context where New York City was in nineteen
ninety five, a bit more of an innocent time pre
nine to eleven. Yes, but you have to remember, especially
you know, in terms of landmarks in the city or
major hubs of transportation, nineteen ninety three, the trade Center

(31:50):
of course gets here.

Speaker 6 (31:50):
Yeah, first I would say post ninety three, Yeah, that's yeah,
it was post ninety three that very aware of a
lot of situations that were going on, you know, nation war,
and so that's always in the back of our mind.
It's just because we're wit, we're gonna be the ones
who are going to respond to that. And there was
always that notion of you know, you have the first
incident and then there's a second attack on the first responders.

(32:13):
So that's always in the back of your mind because
I was always the setup and they were doing a
small scale and just had nothing to do with the
Islamic terrorism, just some of the terrorism that went out
with a watching clinics and stuff where they would have
one explosion and then a time doing for the first responders.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
So that was something that you know, it was it's
in the back of our mind.

Speaker 6 (32:30):
Is you can't just wade into a situation without you know,
checking your sororitings, which is basic you know, first responder,
you know one O one, you know, good to anybody
if you can't if you don't get there alive. So
on top of that, we just look for that suspicious,
what's what's out of what's out of line here, what
doesn't seem normal here, you know, So you're always looking

(32:50):
for We're always looking for that.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, and six months prior to this is when Ed
Leary on the foretrain set off the firebomb in December
of ninety fourth, So there's another incident where naturally you're thinking, Okay,
what's going on here? And you know ESU does a
lot of training for MCIs even before nine to eleven.
All the training that's existed and come out of that
since then, MCI training is something that's regularly done for
emergency service across the board trucks one through ten, specifically

(33:14):
for train emergencies. I know you guys do a lot
of training for man unders trains to rescue. That was
their bread and butter, unfortunately, because they were right there
for it. But for situations like this, was there any
sort of training for train accidents, especially after ninety one?

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Uh No, we always had the attack.

Speaker 6 (33:29):
We were always worried about a hazardous material attack like
in the subway, So we trained for that, do you know,
wearing the level A suits, the you know, the big
taking out the.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Big guns to evacuate the ades.

Speaker 6 (33:41):
But as a collision on the train, I don't really
had a training for that. But again, the training we
do have is omni so we could talk about extrication
of someone. We could do that from an airplane. In
the car trade doesn't doesn't matter, We'll get them out.
But specifically for two trains colliding, no, because it's see
a very rare occasion, it really is. I mean that

(34:02):
one was with ninety one they had one. There was
no injuries involved. There was four months prior to this one,
if I recall, there was there was a trained collision,
but the minimal to no injuries, so that later on
I was just a little you know, fooling around find
out what happened.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
After this incident.

Speaker 6 (34:20):
They said that they changed the lighting system for these
particular trains because they couldn't stop on a dime. So
they were saying it's a problem with not that they
level admitted because of the liability there, but they changed
the system after this accident, so that might you know,
you draw your own conclusions. I mean, if the guy

(34:40):
really did fall asleep or something else went wrong that
you know, couldn't be traced. But at the end of
the day, as far as the rescue effort, I think
it went well. I remember we had Chief Anoman on
the scene and he just what do you need? What
do you guys need and we pretty much had everything
that we needed on site. We're just going to get
the people out, and we just wanted to do didn't

(35:01):
want to drop somebody at the bottom line, you.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Know, you just that, yeah, exactly, you just didn't want
to drop a person. We can't.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
We kept it basic, you know, just get it, get
get everybody, you know, uh, stabilized, and get them on
a bus and get them to the hospital forthwith. And
that's that's that's the way it was done. It was
done in the orderly fashion, everybody getting work together. Uh,
everybody stayed out of each other's ways. You know, we
need the ladders. FT provided the ladders they also have
on on the bridge ceremon from my transit training, they

(35:30):
have these ladders that are stationed along the route to
the other perfect size to get onto the train itself.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
From the platform for the lower platform.

Speaker 6 (35:39):
But they weren't that many to you know, and it
was very precarious to walk down those things. Those mainly
for workers, not for civilians. So again we didn't want
even if you were the walking wounded, you're very careful
about how you lower somebody down from the train to
then walk across to then go up to the sidewalker
platform that was that was secure. So it was a

(36:01):
little bit of a you know, uh, very They keep
using the word precarious because you really had to watch
a step. Yeah yeah, I mean you didn't want to.
You don't even want to hit a train electrical shoe
because that it's actually very sharp and if you run
up against that, you could actually hurt yourself. One of
the electric shoes, shoes that they run along the third rail.

(36:21):
You don't remember from Chris you call from the transit training.
You don't want to you don't want to touch one
of those. You don't get hit one of those. You
don't want to bump into one of those.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
I don't think back then. I don't think back then the.

Speaker 6 (36:32):
Trains held the charge, so the powers off, the train
was off. But I know the new trains they hold
the charge, which is even scarier. The power could be
off and the train is charged, so it's still a
hot train.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (36:44):
So now it's I think it's even more dangerous than
back in the old day. I was not like an
old guy back in the day, but uh, you know so,
but again, there was there was so many dangers anytime
you deal with the subways, and it really is yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Go ahead, no, no, you know. And on top of
that too, like I said, you mentioned the danger to
the third rail. You mentioned the danger again of the
heights component too. One thing I didn't want to ask
in line with that, the Atom car does have like
even though I know they're smaller, it's not FD type pipe.
But does the Atom car carry ladders?

Speaker 6 (37:15):
If remember yes, all vehicles carry ladders, okay, ex extend
extension ladders. Yeah, we have extention ladders also since after
the merge with Transit, especially in one truck, if they
carried those Transit ladders, the yellow ones that were just
specifically made to climb onto a train. So as far
as the equipment we were, we were on point. We
had we were on the money with that amatic and

(37:37):
large volume when you talk about I think it was
fifty plus aids, and well, we're not taking into consideration
the ones who were not eighties, like you said, the
people who had you know, they got shook up and
thankfully then they're not.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Going to the hospital, it's still going to go anywhere.

Speaker 6 (37:50):
But you still had those walking around, and then you
have people who just wanted to come up as a
walkway on that bridge and people.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
You know, now you got a crowd of people wanting
to see what's going on.

Speaker 6 (37:58):
So it's always good, you know, the pain paining the
butt bystanders. Yah, yeah, exactly, So you have that. So
there's a lot, there's a lot to it, and you
want to get it done. Of course, then it comes
that pressure with the MTA wants that train, you know,
they want to take those trains apart and let's get this, this,
this railroad going because that's that's their bread and butter.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
And that's always been the case with transit.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
And I hate to say it, but they're thinking too,
we're losing money. They're they're about money by the minute.
While this absolutely is on the you know. So it
sounds callous, it is, but that's exactly how they're running.
And you kind of it's almost as if you had
my notes in front of you hot earlier, because what
you mentioned in terms of liability factor, the transit authority
that investigated this on their own independent of the NTSP,

(38:41):
that's exactly what they were talking about. In terms of
you mentioned the alignment of trains earlier. It says they
found that the uh. In their own investigation that the
signals were spaced too closely together, which played a role
on why that train wasn't able to stop, because I
think even if the guy, I don't think it's a
stretch to say with signals like that, even if he
wasn't fatigued, he probably still would have had a problem.

(39:01):
And the MTA, it says, modified both track signals and
train cars to lower the average speeds.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
And yep, it was because it was they were averaged
twenty five miles an hour. Those thes are not to
stop on a dime. No, you got a whole lot
of train moving and you're trying to stop at a
twenty five mile an hour. You're gonna you're gonna move
aways before that train comes to a stop.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Oh, especially for Yeah, but they much heavier. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (39:25):
And this was again this was going on the downward
angle because it was going back into Brooklyn, so it's
going for the APEX coming down.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
So you had that momental to go with me to
come to come to a sudden stop. Terrific.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, and you guys are the uh.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
No, I was just gonna say. The The other thing was.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
It they did have automatic brakes but by the time
the automatic break actually kicked in, uh, they did not
have time to stop, and they were going a little
too fast.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
They were overspeeding a little bit.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
And the problem too, they found was they there was
no speedometer in the in the cabs of the U
R forties or the R forty two's and which were
the type trains that were involved for you train buffs
out there. And uh this particular incident then caused NTSB

(40:18):
Toho to state there will be uh speedometers retrofitted and
of course going forward, any any uh any built by
I want to say it was a Saint Louis car company,
any whatever it is, the train bust will know and
there's plenty of them out there.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
But uh, well, I I mean yeah, but anyway, they.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Uh they said that obviously they're going to besides the
uh the aforementioned uh spacing of the lights, they're going
to make sure that uh the that they have speedometers
so that they can be monitored. They also found an issue,
you with the fact that there was the train stopped
on the tracks were unplanned and then uh nothing got

(41:09):
radio doubt, you know, on the transit side. So there
was there you know that the whole like Swiss cheese,
lining up the whole factor thing. There were a lot
of little problems that all kind of added up at
the right time.

Speaker 6 (41:27):
They also reported that he went through a couple of
yellows and then went through a red.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Yes, correct, was that?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (41:33):
Was he you know, was he actually asleep? I mean
maybe he was, who knows, but yeah, there was. There
was a lot of different components to this crash, and
the answers we got changed over time.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
So it's what it was what it appeared.

Speaker 6 (41:47):
The answers just started changing a little bit, you know,
because they started implementing changes, which if if it was
just you know, operator era mm hmm, you know, maybe
a little bit of both.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, And you find that a lot with these mass
casualty incidents. It's the same thing with TWA when that happened.
The story to this day, it's almost been thirty years.
Is TWA happened? It's been thirty years since this incident
that we're talking about tonight happened. The story always seems
to fluctuate because you get the nail on the head earlier,
hose nobody wants to play the blame game, or we
actually know everybody wants to play the blame game.

Speaker 4 (42:17):
Nobody wants to take the.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Blank, right, Nobody wants to take the blame exactly right.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
So I mean, and then you know this day and
age now with all the you know, Internet and the
so forth. You know, the conspiracy theories, you got regular
Joe's out here figuring stuff out. You know, there's no
days where you could and the lawyer used to get
away with it.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Now it's not.

Speaker 6 (42:36):
It's a little hard to to fib and get away
with it because you know, it's so a lot of
these is to investigate stuff as a you know, as
a civilian somebody just on the on the internet.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
But it's still a tragic story. I mean sure it is.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yeah, and tight quarters to work as a rescuer too.
Because we have another photo here, and I think David
hansh took this photo. David I should have credited the
other day. My apologies on that, but David, thank you
very much for these photos.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
And this is one of them where again elevated platform
as it is. Look how many people are there alone
try to move victims down. There's lots a lot of
people working on top of each other.

Speaker 6 (43:11):
Yeah, that's that's in front of the train. That's where
the collision happens. So everybody wants everybody wants a piece
of that one, so to speak, you know, to to
be part of that extrication. But this thing went all
the way down to the train, all the way to
the end. I mean, this is everybody on that train
felt that that.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Collision they were thrown. Uh.

Speaker 6 (43:27):
And so yeah, this is like the main spot here
because this is the epercenter, you know, the ground zero,
the actual collision. It's the best photo too. But at
the end of the day it thenned out. It was
just this area. I remember being really really crowded. But
as you said, I would say, we put ladder stage
and like every third door to get some in some train.

(43:47):
Some of the cars only had five people on, some
had more. So we were just really we didn't want
we didn't want people going through the trains through the
regular you know, internal doors.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
We want to remove them from the car they were in.

Speaker 6 (43:58):
I remember that being a price, because you really didn't
want people just roaming.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Around right and bring into the scene potentially right.

Speaker 6 (44:06):
And then there was a lot of the open doors,
so you know, if you're not paying attention, you could
literally fall out of that car. Yeah, and people just
shook up. They shook up this that the morning started
out like this.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
They hit another train yep, and they're disoriented. On top
of that. Absolutely have a picture of some of the
extrication work here and there are some of the rescue
guys and worth noting a shout out to Tilly Guydell.
That's her father on the bottom. The fireman on the
bottom of the photo that's has his hand in the
window sill Scary guy Dell. Gary Guidell was a longtime
member of Rescue one in the Ft and Y. Gary

(44:36):
unfortunately ended up giving his life on nine to eleven.
So that's a good photo of him and action there.
Shout out to Tilly, his daughter who often talks about him. So,
Steve Kurrs, you and I know Chris Steph Kerr is
a very much down to the letter kind of guy.
He's very detail oriented. That's what made him so good
at what he did both Chirk course and EMS and
later around OEM and everything else that he's done since then.
So being essentially his aid for something like this, tell

(44:59):
me about what he needed from you and just making
sure you gave him. Much like animon was given the
ESU couch what they needed. That you you made sure
you gave Steve what he needed.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
So basically, you know, we were by a command board
uh once once somebody set that up. I was kind
of monitoring any and all radio traffic so that I
could try to keep as much uh information uh that's
coming in sorted out. I had a a piece of

(45:33):
paper or pad, I'm not sure what I had, but
I was definitely writing down times, you know, because later
on you're gonna want to go back and plug in times.
You know, when was the last patient extricated or you know, evacuated.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Uh, that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Uh, you know when we were on scene, you know exactly,
you know, on on the spot, that kind of thing,
because there's always going to be reports. You know, nothing's
done until the paperwork's done. Basically, you know, if he
had trying to anticipate any questions that he might have,
you know, what hospitals are open?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
What?

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Uh you know, like I mentioned before, that kind of thing.
So if I heard something and it wasn't shown on
the on the command board, I would sit there and
tell whoever's running the command board, hey, let's jot that
down either at the bottom or you know, if there's
a couple of units that went en route from the

(46:36):
scene to the hospital or from staging into the transport
area to get loaded up and then go, you know,
trying to keep all those you know, units kind of tracked.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
You know, the.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Command board is a magnetic board. You write the unit
number on a little uh a little a little you
know tag, and you know, you can physically move it
on the board from staging to you know, treatment, to enterute,
to hospital too at hospital and then you know once

(47:12):
they you know, they may come back, depending on how
large DMCI is.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
Anyway, that's it's just logistics, basically, is.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
The big thing. Are we running out of backboards? Are
we running out of you know, what do we need? Luckily,
this was not, as we've mentioned before, the amount of injuries.
It wasn't like we needed extra supplies of any sort
you know that you know, for it wasn't a specialty

(47:44):
type incident where you know, you needed more hazmat suits
or you needed a lot of bandages or a lot
of burn stuff. So but that's basically, you know, you're
just trying to monitor, anticipate needs and quite frankly, since
we worked with him. We were you know, he was

(48:05):
Special Operations and the Hastack Unit was underneath him. He
trained us and then we worked for him. You know,
it was pretty easy to to know what you know,
what to expect, what he'd want from us, and you know,
you just try, you just try to anticipate and get

(48:27):
him what he needs.

Speaker 4 (48:27):
And you knew who who the different.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Liaison officers were, so if you had a question, you
knew who to go to to get the right answer
right now.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
And it's kind of it's kind of the thing.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
And I mentioned to do in the light of the
picture I showed earlier the front car, the J train
R forty a car number forty four to sixty one,
and the back car the M train R forty two
car number of forty six sixty four, both completely destroyed
in the collision and other car suft for minor damage
led to some of the shake ups that jose was
talking about earlier. But those two front cars were completely destroyed,

(49:05):
trapped him in there, and I'm shocked. I mean, listen,
that's a good thing considering the situation, only well less
than a half hour actually to get him out. You
would look at damage like that and think that you
guys would be there just for two hours alone trying
to get that guy out, even though unfortunately he was
already dead.

Speaker 6 (49:19):
Yeah, so pretty much he died on impact, so he
didn't suffer, thank you, which is yeah, which is kind
of a something you want to hear.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
Guy was a trap.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
The screaming.

Speaker 6 (49:28):
We've had plenty of jobs like that, you know, say, yeah,
you know, the say call someone stuff between the platform
and the space cases. Yeah, we yeah, that's always horrible,
but I don't know, it's again we're dealing with that.
I think it was. It was a rescue one truck
when we're there and you know, the guys got the
job done. It was just a matter of just cutting
certain parts of that train and to just free him.

(49:52):
That was that, to feed his body and just get
him out of there. Uh So it wasn't as bad
as it would been. The worst of the poor man
was a life, you know, then they would have been
you know know that you you got to get your
paramedics in there, start some lines, keep this person, you know,
try to keep them stable, controlling the bleeding, and then
try to extricate them at the same time because the
whole portion, the whole point of extricating somebody from the

(50:14):
vehicle is like you're not getting them out of the situation.
You're cutting the situation away from that person, so they
could just simply just come out. So yeah, it's it's
it's actually it's almost artwork the way we do it.
So often, not specifically, training is just getting somebody out
of a vehicle or something who's trapped. It becomes to
see what we can do, and you know, you develop

(50:35):
certain techniques that work. So there's a lot of uh
of not cheating. We don't we don't have to go
through the different stages to get to that point. We
skip over because you know, there is the playbook and
then there's reality. And when you have enough experience and
you got guys i'll speak for emergency, you got guys
with twenty thirty years in the unit. Uh, these guys

(50:55):
know what they're doing and they make it look easy,
and yess, that's what you learn from that. I learned
from senior guys how to do this stuff because they've
made the mistakes or they've seen the mistakes and they
know how to correct them and now they just pass
it on. So we become a more cohesive unit when
it comes to extricating people from either a train, a plane,
car or whatever.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (51:15):
So but yeah, this surprised me at all that it
was such a short period of time, which to me,
twenty thirty minutes is a long time for an extraction
because we used the vehicles, we pop you out a
couple two minutes, we got you out and you know,
on the bus. But yeah, for something that was it's
a really fantastically hard scene. When we're talking about the train,
when that almost six feet into each other, that's a

(51:37):
big distance of metal to.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Get crushed in.

Speaker 6 (51:39):
How is this guy even you know, how that you
know he had any viable pieces of human in that.
But again there's a way, you know, they find a
way and we do it. It's it's more at hot,
but it's also based on a lot of experience. You know,
just just know where to cut and what to push back,
and it just.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Comes from experience.

Speaker 6 (52:01):
And uh again that so far, I haven't seen anything
that's ever left us stumped like we can't do this now,
it's not in our vocabulary.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
We'll figure out a way, you know.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
So just for the whole anytime, anywhere you know anything,
we'll get it done.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
And it was.

Speaker 6 (52:15):
But it was again I like to point out that
I've been at scenes where there is no mutual cooperation.
You know, there used to be the battle of the
badges back in my day. He'll go old guy again,
where we were always battling because you know, somebody wanted
to claim this is all the turrets or all that nonsense.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
You look back at it now, this one was like, hey,
you got a job to do. I got a job too.

Speaker 6 (52:33):
Let's just let's just get this job, you know done,
Because it was it was a pain in the butt,
you know, in a sense when you're dealing with so
many people that, yeah, are legitimately injured, but then you're
also dealing with gawkers and people who just, okay, this
is a payday for me. You know, I think the
MKA is going to pay out. There's always there's always that,
you know, in the back of some of these folks
and you see it. You know, it's the cynical part

(52:54):
of being a city worker. You get to see all
the nonsense that goes on and you take it a stripe.
But it was a it was a busy morning.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Yeah, we we called those insurance pains.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah, exactly, So, so.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
How long in total like across the board for both
Chris and and you gooja.

Speaker 6 (53:15):
I'm gonna say that was the whole morning. I think
we did till like tenish or eleven. It was pretty much.
I mean that we didn't stay for the aftermoon. There's
guy used to stay. But as far as we were concerned,
once all the agies were out and the scene was
somewhat secured, then you you handed over to the transit
meetings guys. It's it's their mess now. Yeah, and it's

(53:36):
the same I would have assumed the same for EMS.
Once all the ages are out and everything it was
to accounted for, you go ninety eight, you know, you go
back to patrol, do what you gotta do, the paperwork whatever.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
You know. And but yeah, something like that.

Speaker 6 (53:48):
Yeah, you say you hand it over to traffic because
that bridge is gonna be a nightmare for the rush
hour and the goal is to clear that by rush hour.
You know, no matter how hard, these guys will move,
heaving the earth to get those trains out of there
so they could get that track going again. And I
was that I didn't notice any traffic damage. You know,
that's that's that's that's a big it might have been there,

(54:10):
but I didn't notice any of that because of the
carriage from still on the track itself. The two trains
ended up going upwards and coming off the carriages, So
that in itself is like wow.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
So Chris, I was gonna say, giving the EMS component
of things and just keeping tabs on patience for you
guys there longer about the same amount of time as
the SU.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Uh well, you know, I'm sure we we probably uh
we probably went back in service about the same time.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
We started de escalating fairly early.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
And then but of course we had you know, every
time you de escalate, you're gonna send you know, a
certain amount of trucks back into their areas, and but
you're gonna save a couple because you always want to
keep in the back of your mind that hey, this
is a dangerous place and the MTA worker could accidentally

(55:04):
fall and hurt himself and need to be helped right away,
you know, Fidney. Of course, the SU guys never fall
or hurt themselves either, right, I.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Mean, yeah, okay.

Speaker 7 (55:18):
Now, but but yeah, no, the we fall in style
there you go, okay, okay, good, good, But but no,
you always want to make sure that you've you've got
you know, a couple of buses available for the actual
rescuers themselves.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
A dehydration even you know, uh not even just uh
like on this particular case, we might not have been
terribly worried about dehydration. But once again, like you said before,
the guys circling back to the uh uh Union Square
train job, which I was also at the UH you know,

(55:56):
the guys who were down there, they're working, working, working,
same as the s U same as fire. You don't
really monitor yourself sometimes so that you know that you
can really those guys that were coming out of the hole,
they they were they were pretty uh, they were pretty

(56:17):
spent and uh and a few of them were dehydrated.
And no, luckily in that particular case, nobody needed to
go to the hospital. But uh, you know, that's one
thing that that I've always found with all sorts of
UH rescuers is is uh, they'll overwork themselves trying to
help others, and so so we always, for em s wise,

(56:39):
we always wanted to try to monitor our own guys
while they're treating others. So that's kind of something to
keep in the back of mind kind of and another
thing to roll back with the uh union square job
it's underground. Had this been underground, now you're you're you're

(56:59):
talking about the uh, the financial you know, they don't
want to lose money, but they also don't want to
back up trains because if they back up trains, there's
civilians stuck underground.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
And once again, now you've got the possibility of uh,
you know, your higher.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Risk uh people having a you know, any kind of
medical condition exacerbate quickly underground from being underground.

Speaker 4 (57:28):
Too long in the heat.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
And uh so there's there's there's a lot of reasons
to get those get those trains.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
Running and uh and and get them going.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
That not that it's uh not that finances aren't aren't
I'm sure a priority, but uh but yeah, you don't
want those those trains backed up.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
And then you know, people in the in the hole
too long.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Well, like I said earlier, they're going to bleed money
as a result of that a couple of months well,
of course, and then there's a question in the chat
that's for you, Jose about the execation equipment. But this
is from an article from the New York Times by
Matt Wald crashing the subway dated June sixth, nineteen ninety five.
Crashing the subway to the system, signals from another era
leave room for human error. So, of course, as is
so often the case in New York City, that in

(58:16):
the lead up to disasters like this, one of the
main factors outdated equipment that shouldn't still be used, and
of course it's still being used, and naturally, you know,
it leads to something like this where it mentions. It
was quickly determined that Gibson, the motorman who had died tragically,
had overrun a signal that was supposed to be read.
Like you mentioned earlier, Chris and Jose. Normally, running past
the red signal would have caused a track side stop

(58:37):
to be raised, thereby causing the train to break, but
this had not happened immediately prior to the crash. Additionally,
the train stopping rods on the J train and on
the track side were supposed to strike each other with
a J train passed the red signal, triggering the emergency
braking system on the train. However, yep, on the day
of the crash, the rods failed to align, and so

(58:58):
the emergency brakes from the J train were not engaged.
Had they engaged, maybe that band would have lived and
maybe that collision wouldn't have happened. So faulty equipment, older
equipment one of the leading reasons for why this disaster happens.
So yeah, yeah, question regarding the education equipment comes from
Steve Virados, for you would say, how difficult was it
to get all that education equipment up to where it

(59:19):
was needed?

Speaker 2 (59:21):
It's just plain old muscle. We carried our stuff off there.

Speaker 6 (59:24):
One guy to carry the generator, don't carry the spreaders
the cutters, you know, it's it's uh, it's a team effort.
I've gone on jobs, but I'm carrying one hand. I
don't know how to do it not but my back
probably explains it why it's so beat up now. But
you know, you carry the spreaders in one hand, you
have the cutters in the other, and somebody's grabbing you
the generator. We also elicited help from you know, patrol

(59:45):
or even if you have a fireman standing and hey, guys,
give us a hand, you know, just just it's just labor, okay,
Well we get it up there, we get you know,
and if we know that one piece is up here
following truble, get you on a direct on the direct
on the radio, and what do you guys need? And
we was, okay, we're missing distance and that and that
truck will bring up the you know, spreaders or whatever
we need, uh or if we're going to use airbags

(01:00:07):
or whatever we think we need, this particular truck will
bring it. So at this scene we had plenty of
personnel because again you had Brooklyn and you had in Manhattan,
and then you got the little guy from you got
the little guy from the Bronx happened to be flying
that day, so you know. So, But again this is
that's that's the teamwork, and everybody knows their job, and yeah,
you don't you a job like this, you don't want

(01:00:28):
to show up empty handed right now, that's true. So
whether it's the ladder or Stokes basket something, you better
have something in your hand that's needed.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
And everybody did that day. Rather if there was medical location, equipment, ladders.
So that we're about the hour mark, I guess we
could put a bow on it. So looking back, the
job turned thirty in June, which is hard to believe,
I'm sure for you guys thirty years since since it, Chris,
I'll start with you, given, of course the training that's
come out of it, every major m c I across
the country, there's always training in SOPs and sgs that
come out of it. As you look back thirty years later,

(01:01:01):
what are your recollections of it and what it means
as far as training since then?

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
So quite frankly, in the original Hastack unit, we we
didn't get a whole lot of training, you know, on
the tracks at all. Okay, But recently I was visiting
New York and I was able to go out to

(01:01:26):
the Hastack Battalion and apparently Hastack has grown from the
one truck that that I was that I was on,
They've grown it to a fleet of Hastag trucks that
are throughout the city. And they get trained at this
location at the at at the Rock, at the FDNY Academy,

(01:01:53):
and they have a complete building of just transportation emergencies
for the subways, and they have their own own cars
which you're showing pictures of those are those are not
uh in the subway, those are at the Rock in
a building and uh they have tracks tunnel uh that Uh,

(01:02:17):
they've got everything so that they can you know, go
in and both E M. S. Hastac and uh, you know,
Fidney Rescue or whoever can go in shoe the uh
uh the third rail, uh air bag, the the truck,
the car off the trucks air bag, the uh the

(01:02:44):
car away from the platform for a space case, to
do all the different extrications that they may need for
either a man under or you know.

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):
Like I said, a space case.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
They can do an awful lot of stuff now and
it's extremely impressive. In fact, when I was there, they
had just gotten the new subway car that may or
I heard may not I'm not positive be the next purchase,
but they've already got it and they're able to train
on it already now before those trains even uh get

(01:03:18):
to New York City to be placed in service. That's
Bobby Leonard. He was the p I O on that call.
Great guy, Great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
And they showed these pictures earlier and of course.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Yeah so this, yeah, this is actually one of our
original Hastac guys too.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
That's Marty Matusa.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
And you can see where that's a Fidney roof ladder
that they're using at that particular point and and uh
that I took that shot. I'm standing on the ground.
Well you can see there's another another guy in front
of me of Fidney dude, and that that shows you

(01:04:01):
about how much higher you know, it's it was about
six feet up I guess, because there's almost head level
maybe five feet I guess. And so that was that
was the amount of space they were having to uh,
you know, having to get these people down and why
they were using Stokes baskets for a lot of them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Of course unrelated to this job. But again why it's
nice to have both of you here tonight before I
throw it to for his final recollections, this photo during
the housing training. That's the classic.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Wow, look at those young guys.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Yeah, so we did. That's the bridge climb. That's who
we climb Brooklyn.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
It is yes, it is, yes, sir, Oh my gosh, Yes,
great photo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Thanks for Sharon. I'll throw it thirty years since this incident.
What are your recollections now that you look back on it?

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
Well, like anty like seen concept that that Fidney has
if you go to Floyd bennet Field that we have
a full mock up of a train, not only for
the same you know, rescue operations. But now we could
practice uh two blear as salts like we used to
do up at Camp Smith. We used to go up
there and assault the bus or you know it's assault
the airplane the bus or whatever. They have that now

(01:05:13):
at the Floyd Bennett Field. Uh So, as far as
the training, as the equipment is there should there be more, absolutely,
But it's it's at a much higher level than when
I was on you know, if it wasn't for the
fact that I went to the transit es U course,
I didn't really get any much of that. And when

(01:05:33):
I was in STS and I got to steal the
bags and the and how to estricating all that. But
the transit course showed us all the hidden dangers that
lurking the tunnels. It's it's amazing how just what a
really dangerous place the subway system is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Aside from the giant you.

Speaker 6 (01:05:52):
Know, raccoon sized rats and roaches the size of god
knows what. You know, there's there's just so many ways
you can get hurt working in transit. So it gave
me a respect for the whole environment. That environment is
just very hazardous in general, but as far, and I
think it's it's great that they're they're not putting that

(01:06:13):
in or they have been putting in for I've been
out of the job as much as the past of
thirty years here, and so every time I go and visit,
I see new improvements in the classes and the way
the instructors are running things, which is the way it
should be. They should never lower the standards, and I
don't think they have any emergency because you're held to
that high standard. You should stay at that standard at

(01:06:35):
all at all courts. But learning from back then, yeah,
I think that. I mean, I think this. I believe
there's more cooperation out with the agencies. You know, you
don't see those headlines anymore of the little battle of
the badges kind of stuff. But uh so, maybe that's
that's an improvement, especially after nine to eleven, which is
a mutually disastrous day for everybody involved.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
We grow away from that.

Speaker 6 (01:06:56):
But I mean, I still have the confidence that it'll
get handled. Whatever you know able to happen again, it'll
it'll get handled the boy it's supposed to. Because I
have a lot of faith in the emergency Service and
any of the NYPD. I could only speak for them,
you know, so, and I'm not I'm not exposure for
the RD. And my gut tells me that there's still

(01:07:17):
there's still top notch, you know. It's one of the
leaders in that field, rescue and tactical. So that's why
I'm at. I always support the issue.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Yeah as well. I'll never forget something that Pauly Paracone
said on this show a while ago, a great guy
out of one truck and leader the bomb squad. Where
he was saying when I interviewed him a couple of
years back, if you think about it, you're talking about
FD and Y Rescue and the NYPD Emergency Service Unit.
When something happens, you have these two elite units racing
to get to you. And he wasn't saying that in

(01:07:50):
a negative context, but they want to help, so it
doesn't And I said this before, I don't care who's
helping me. I don't care if he has an FD
and Wife patch on the side of his shoulder or
an NYPDMGC squad patch on the side of his shoulder.
Just get me out, you know. And we know that
wherever unit is, they're gonna get you out.

Speaker 6 (01:08:06):
Yeah, we didn't see that kind of bickering with the
with the top units like rescue and we got up,
we got along. It was mostly the other you know,
fire department guys that they want to get a little
piece of the action, and it's they're hard to in
the right place.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Sometimes they just don't.

Speaker 6 (01:08:20):
Have the the equipment of the experience to do it
the way we do it. And you know, sometimes we
don't like to mix a match. I don't know what
I don't know what the level they're at. They don't
know what level we're at, and that's where the bickering starts.
And then you get the big bosses coming batty chiefs
and chiefs and the least they don't know what they're
doing anyway. So then let us worker bees do out
do our things and usually the job gets done, you know.

(01:08:43):
But again, yeah, yeah, absolutely it was. It was like
I said, I don't recall it being hot. It was
a cool day against early in the brisk early morning,
and you're right over the East River and nothing but
you in in in in space and some girders to
stop me from going all the way down to the river.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
That's pretty much it.

Speaker 6 (01:09:01):
It was just a scaffolding basically, but it was a
very very precarious, dangerous job if you weren't careful.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Thankfully everybody was that day. So, as I've said before,
this program, and we'll stick around, we'll talk off the air, guys,
and I thank you both for your time this evening.
You know, like I sold Jose as we were Spitball
before we came on the air. Doesn't have to be
a Michael Bay movie. We've had big jobs that we've
chronicled them this program. But it's just nice to look
back on these incidents, and obviously we're not happy they happened,
but from the standpoint of who was where, what they did,

(01:09:32):
lessons learned, you know, I think it's good to chronicle
this and archive it because these are moments in the
history of New York City's rescue services across the board
that stand out for a variety of different reasons. Of course,
you know when Mitch Stern Chris was on the show
a couple of years ago, Sternville, what was that for
MCIs like this where you know, everything he was doing
with Sternville came into play on this morning. So it's

(01:09:53):
just good to look back and again see what guys
did and how that since influenced jobs and trainings that
have followed in the year since, especially a equipment modernizes
and things improve with the more resources that become available.
A lot has changed certainly since nineteen ninety five. So
it was good to look back on again. Thank you
both very much and stick around. We'll talk off their.
Thanks to everybody as always that tuned in tonight, I

(01:10:15):
did just want to run this advertisement real quick, which
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(01:11:02):
you covered check them out if you haven't. Again, new
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Mike Tin New Even podcast. Like I mentioned, I'm working
the ambulances Friday to forty five or ten forty five,
so there will be no program because I will be
out on the street. But you'll get one this Monday.
If you remember, you remember her from Channel two, you
remember her from WPIX. She's currently a spokeswoman for Verizon.

(01:11:23):
Alex Lee will be here, so looking forward to hearing
from her and of course the look back at her
television career and what she's doing now and the Friday
to follow after that. He was in Ladder five for
a long time in the FD and Wife, so he
remembers he was there the night of the Watch Street fire,
and he would be there again when Latter five would
lose quite more men on the morning of nine to eleven.
That's Craig Monahan. He's going to be here for another

(01:11:45):
volume of the best of the Bravest interviews with the
FD and Wives Elite. In the meantime, this was the
best of both Badges chronicling the nineteen ninety five Williamsburg
Brooklyn subway crash and on behalf of PRIs Ebden and
Jose Garra, I Mike Cologne, we'll see you next time
and again, take care of I say said every question.

Speaker 8 (01:12:51):
A lot of just down and bleat.

Speaker 9 (01:12:58):
Went down on the stay shut and he never came back.

Speaker 8 (01:13:05):
It found his clothes.

Speaker 9 (01:13:08):
He's got it somewhere down the train and he won't
be down on Wall Street.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
And mon.

Speaker 8 (01:13:20):
He had a hole.

Speaker 9 (01:13:23):
Love of a girl then getting lost some times she's
on firl. One day he crossed online and he was
too bad. She this world, but I guess it doesn't
matter any more.

Speaker 8 (01:13:54):
In the way chair and you getting out of stand
he got im naking chef.

Speaker 9 (01:14:18):
Fine here the dogs, you're the Simons. Well, somebody gone
to the emergency. Somebody's gone a jail. You find somebody
to love, and that's well. You better hang out under
the mad. The Whoopings always had a done.

Speaker 8 (01:14:52):
N chaf and she got out out of state.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
It is a.

Speaker 8 (01:15:06):
Haven in these days.

Speaker 9 (01:15:20):
Got miss Fisi, big poll personal two ones over. You
better take a pawns advice take care of them.

Speaker 8 (01:15:38):
One day up here let's leave it.

Speaker 9 (01:16:11):
Took my coat around my shoulders, took a walk down.

Speaker 8 (01:16:16):
Through the park.

Speaker 9 (01:16:18):
Leaves were falling around me, groaning. Sitting the gathering dark
on some solitary rock, A desperate lover left his mind. Baby,
I've change, Please come back. The dead makes cloudy, the

(01:16:44):
heart makes very care. You know the days were so
much righter time when she was here.

Speaker 8 (01:16:55):
I know that somebody somewhere made.

Speaker 9 (01:16:58):
These dark clouds disappear.

Speaker 8 (01:17:02):
Until that day. Yeah, don't mean not ever. They chop
you can't get out of the where ever the chock

(01:17:43):
ever may chat that you get out. That says you,

(01:18:07):
man

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Ja

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Episode 379: Best of Both Badges: 1995 Williamsburg Subway Crash

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