WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- One of the D.C. Fire Fighters on scene at L'Enfant Plaza Station during Monday's smoke incident, spoke exclusively to WUSA9 on camera about what happened and his thoughts on how Metro handled the situation.
"It was a surprise because most of the time, when we run a metro box alarm, it ends up being just paper on the tracks, just some small incident..." Lt. Stephen Kuhn explained.
"As soon as we got into the station we knew something big was happening," Kuhn said, describing the scene when his crew first arrived.
Kuhn told WUSA9 he is a Rescue Squad 1 member, which reports show was the first company to arrive at L'Enfant on Monday. His team was also the first to reach the stranded passengers and begin removing them from the stuck Yellow Line train.
Kuhn gave an unofficial account of what happened in an email that ended-up being published the Initial Report released by Mayor Muriel Bowser's office on Saturday. Kuhn discussed arriving to an already evacuated station and not learning of trapped passengers until underground. He then discussed dealing with non-working radios and heavy smoke. Overall, he told WUSA9 the radio issue was one of the most crippling problems for his team.
"I think if we had known, we meaning the department, had known initially that there was a train with people trapped on the train, it would've brought a lot larger response right away because that's what you need to evacuate a train right away is a lot of man power," Kuhn also noted.
When asked what needs to change, Kuhn answered candidly: "Metro doesn't like having the 3rd rail power cut. It stops traffic, it stops revenue flow. And they know that the Fire Department will get down there, we have no problems stopping it, cutting power. There's got to be some sort of medium between the two, but Metro can't, they can't sit on every incident and try to handle it themselves before they call 911 …"
While the Lt. said proper communication from Metro was not there, he does commend Metro Transit Police who he said stayed with the train until everyone was evacuated. He also commended the passengers for their complete cooperation.
