One person died in the January 2015 Metro incident in a tunnel outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station after scores of riders were trapped aboard a train as it filled with smoke.

One person died in the January 2015 Metro incident in a tunnel outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station after scores of riders were trapped aboard a train as it filled with smoke.

One person died in the January 2015 Metro incident in a tunnel outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station after scores of riders were trapped aboard a train as it filled with smoke.

Nearly two years after a deadly smoke incident at L’Enfant Plaza, Metro is taking legal action against the D.C. fire department, arguing that emergency responders were largely to blame for the tragic results of the Yellow Line calamity, which resulted in the death of a rider.

The allegations are laid out in documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in response to a civil suit filed against Metro and the District by dozens of passengers who suffered injuries while stuck inside the smoke-filled tunnel Jan. 12, 2015. The family of 61-year-old Carol Glover, who died of smoke-related respiratory failure in the episode, is among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

On Monday, attorneys for Metro sought to have the suit dismissed, arguing that the agency has legal immunity because of its role in providing a public service. But in a cross-claim filed simultaneously, the transit agency’s attorneys also argue that most of the casualties occurred because of the chaotic and ineffective response by firefighters and other emergency responders — and that Metro bears no role in evacuating or assisting passengers in an emergency situation.

If Metro is found responsible for Glover’s death or any of the injuries suffered by other riders, they said, the city should help pay the victims.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) called a news conference late Tuesday at a fire station across the street from Metro headquarters — presumably to respond to Metro’s allegations. But after making reporters wait more than 30 minutes, Bowser declined to comment on the litigation or answer questions about the city’s relationship with Metro.

(Saleh Damiger/YouTube)

Instead, Bowser said simply that she has confidence in the Fire and EMS Department’s ability to handle emergencies.

“It was my belief then and it is now that our firefighters ran into harm’s way to make sure that they served and saved people — and but for their actions, we don’t even know what the severity of that incident could have been,” she said.

The D.C. Firefighters Association released a statement late Tuesday that called Metro’s accusations “outlandish.”

“Although the [Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] is quick to blame the District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department, the confession in their cross-claim that should be most alarming to everyone that rides Metro is: Metro ‘expressly denies’ that it ‘owes a duty to WMATA’s passengers to assist, rescue and/or evacuate passengers on Metrorail trains in the event of a fire-emergency situation,’ ” the union said.

“It is most unfortunate WMATA continues to play the blame game, failing to take responsibility for incidents occurring on their public transportation system that have ended in tragedy,” the statement said.

[What Metro train operator heard in tunnel: ‘Yelling, screaming, kicking and banging’]

In its cross-claim, Metro asserts that emergency response officials failed to follow proper protocol as the incident unfolded, sending a battalion commander to the scene who was unfamiliar with Metro’s underground tunnel network and lacked requisite training.





That battalion commander, they said, did not establish a unified command procedure to communicate with officials from Metro and Metro Transit Police — a step that Metro’s lawyers say would have allowed him to quickly realize the magnitude of the disaster unfolding.

Instead, the legal document says, D.C. Fire and EMS officials did not immediately understand that there were people trapped inside the immobile train and that the tunnel was quickly filling with smoke.

Emergency responders “delayed [their] response, resulting in a substantially longer exposure to smoke by passengers on Train 302, thereby exacerbating the nature and extent of each passenger’s injuries,” Metro alleges.

The lawsuit piggybacks on findings included in the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the incident, which was released last year. In the report, federal investigators concluded that communications between the District’s incident commander and Metro officials were “delayed and inefficient.” And they said D.C. Fire and EMS was “unprepared to respond to a mass casualty event on the WMATA underground system.”

The NTSB also concluded that it took at least 15 minutes from the time that Metro first reported smoke for transit officials to call the fire department and request emergency responders.

According to the NTSB, the event unfolded as follows: An electrical malfunction involving defective power cables generated a mass of smoke on tunnel tracks just south of the L’Enfant Plaza station. A Pentagon-bound train encountered the smoke and stopped. Lacking sufficient electrical power — the power had been cut and the cables burned — the train could not back up.

Because of confusion among poorly trained controllers in Metro’s rail operations center and a lack of published guidelines, the crisis rapidly grew worse. Controllers botched the remote operation of ventilation fans in the tunnel, pushing noxious fumes toward the train instead of away from it. And because of Metro’s 15-minute delay in summoning firefighters, riders were stuck on the train for more than 35 minutes, fighting for air.

[Communication breakdowns undercut response in deadly Metro incident]

D.C. Fire Chief Gregory Dean, who attended the news conference with Bowser, said his department has made significant strides in improving communication and coordination with Metro in the two years since the calamity — including training more than 1,000 emergency responders in Metro’s tunnels and posting a fire department official in Metro’s operations control center round-the-clock. Some of those improvements have been guided by the findings in the NTSB report, he acknowledged.

“We’re trying to learn from that as much as possible. We took their findings, and we’re trying to put them into action currently,” Dean said.

As for Metro’s assertions in the lawsuit, he said, “that was their opinion. We have our opinion. We think we have a great fire department. We think our people are well-trained and ready to go, and we’ll continue to improve on that.”

Metro’s court filing also places blame on the District for problems with underground radio communications that were highlighted by the NTSB. The District’s emergency radio system was not functioning inside the tunnel. In the days before the smoke incident, “the District delayed providing access to this site for WMATA’s technicians because . . . it was not convenient,” Metro wrote.

But if the District’s battalion commander had coordinated with Metro officials, they would have been able to use the working Metro Transit Police radios to communicate with emergency responders inside the tunnel, Metro said. Instead, the commander used messengers running in and out of the tunnel to relay information, which the transit agency said wasted precious time.

The communication gap also prolonged the process of shutting down the electrified third rail so that passengers could be evacuated, Metro said.

The cross-claim alleges that the commander appeared to willfully ignore information coming from Metro about the fact that people were stuck inside the train in an increasingly perilous situation.

“The Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief tried to communicate this critical piece of information to the Incident Commander several times, and each time the Incident Commander rolled up his vehicle window and drove off instead of engaging a fellow agency senior official,” Metro’s attorneys wrote.

In total, the cross-claim alleges 10 counts of indemnity and contribution to the incident based on negligence. Metro wants the District to be held financially responsible for any damages that are awarded to the L’Enfant Plaza victims.

Metro also wants a lawsuit filed by Glover’s family and the surviving victims dismissed. The agency’s attorneys argue that critical decisions made before, during and after the crisis — about tunnel fan ventilation systems, about the electrified third rail and about radio equipment — were “difficult choices” that were “fraught with public policy considerations” that should grant Metro immunity.

“These were governmental decisions of a discretionary variety that are entitled to immunity protection,” Metro said in the motion to dismiss.

Patrick Regan, an attorney for Glover’s family and other passengers in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the specifics of Metro’s filing but said he is “fully confident that Metro will be held legally responsible for not only the death of Carol Glover, but also the injuries they caused to all the other passengers.”

In a statement, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel declined to comment on the agency’s cross-claim and motion to dismiss, but he said that both Metro and the District have taken significant steps to prevent such a tragedy in the future.

“With regard to emergency response, a function on which Metro relies on the jurisdictions, riders are safer today as a result of Mayor Bowser’s efforts since the incident to improve training, interagency coordination, and fire department radio testing in the District of Columbia,” Stessel said.

The District is expected to file its own motion to dismiss the case in the coming weeks.