Passengers Claim to Have Smashed Boston Train Windows to Escape Smoke

Passengers on a Boston subway at Quincy Station this morning panicked and smashed windows to escape a smoke-filled Red line train, according to witnesses.

A nurse who was in the train at the time told ABC News she started smelling something like “burning rubber” while they were stopped at Quincy station.

“The smell suddenly got worse when the conductor yelled, ‘Everyone get off the train now!’ Kristen Bellow, a nurse at Fisher College said. “The conductor might have said there could be a fire, but I’m not sure because of everything that was going on.”

She said people became panicked and poured out of the train, but the doors of the car behind her never opened.

But there was never any smoke inside the train, according to Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

I had to laugh.  So who are you going to believe?  Several hundred T passengers or one MBTA PR hack?    OK, that was an easy question.   So here is my story, coming from the last years I commuted into Boston on the MBTA, or simply The T as it’s known.   As in, “Here comes Trouble!”.

Years ago while I was still working in Boston, I took a train to Braintree in the the late evening. The trip itself was uneventful but the end of the trip brought one the worst derelictions of duty I’ve ever seen on the T’.
Briefly, the train arrived in Braintree Station and stopped at the platform. So far, so good. Everyone in the subway car got up and lined up at the doors. At that time of night and at the end of the line there were about ten people. So we waited for the doors to open. The other cars, the doors opened and passengers left. And waited, and waited. The sounds of voices and mechanical noises came from the other end of the train, but the doors didn’t open. Then the ventilation fans in the car stopped and the hum of a electric motor on standby ceased.
We waited ten minutes, we pushed the “Emergency” button on the end of the car, we pounded on the windows. A man in a MBTA uniform came out of a door nearby and we all yelled and pounded on the doors. He looked briefly in our direction but continued to the staircase and left. Five minutes later a voice came out of the intercom box, an angry voice, “What are you doing!, Your not supposed to push the red button!”. We pushed the red button and screamed back “Let us out!”. Some five minutes later someone come up and inserted a large “key” into the side of the car and the doors opened. The man walked away quickly as the doors opened without a word.
I went down to the main entrance with the others but not a single T employee could be seen.

And then there is the time the MBTA tried to kill me…

I typed the above story in the comment page for the Boston Heralds coverage of this incident, however, The Boston Herald has (unwisely) gone to login  by Facebook only. I don’t text, twitter or get in peoples faces or their Facebook page.  Since my Herald login doesn’t work anymore I guess I won’t be commenting there anymore.

Here’s a new contest!  In the comments come up with new meanings of the acronym, “MBTA”.  Here’s mine.

Manics (of)

Boston (and)

Transit

Assholes.

Too harsh?