Passenger reports from
The Washington Post:
In the first car of the six-car Red Line train, on a sunny-day evening commute, passengers heard a message familiar to any Metrorail rider: The conductor said they were holding for a moment -- there was a train ahead.
The train started moving again, picking up to moderate speed.
Then, without even the squeal of brakes as a warning, there was a crash, and the feeling of being lifted up as the train hit one that was stopped.
Inside the car, there was dust and broken glass and blood. Seats had been ripped from the floor and thrown around: One man was trapped between two of them, with a leg that appeared broken. A woman was screaming, invisible, buried beneath a pile of seats.
But the most incredible thing was the floor itself. It was gone, peeled away. Passengers could look down and see the grooved-metal roof of another Metro train.
"The front of the train just opened up," said passenger Marcie Bacchus, 30, who was among a handful of passengers in the car at the center of the deadliest accident in Metro's 33-year history.
The crash happened about 5.p.m., on an above-ground stretch of track that runs through neighborhoods between the Fort Totten and Takoma stations. Authorities said one Red Line train rear-ended another, hitting with such force that its first car was thrown on top of the other train.
Brianna Milstead, 17, a high-school student from Waldorf, was in that car. She could see out the front window, and saw the other train getting closer -- though she saw it too late to react.
"It happened so quick," Milstead recalled, looking at her ash-covered hands. "The floor smushed up. It was lifted up. I saw the debris flying toward me. I was choking on the smoke."
Dave Bottoms, 39, had just left his job as an Army Chaplain at Walter Reed. The Anglican priest was in the back of the front car that slammed into the stopped train. When he saw the train buckling, it looked just like it would in the movies, he said.
"It felt like it was going in slow motion," he said. "I started praying."
In the chaotic moments after the crash, he walked to a young woman who had been pinned in between seats. She was hysterical, he said, but he began calming her--and the other passengers in the car.
The group began saying the Lord's Prayer in unison.
SNIP
Anglican ping at 200.
(snip)
Dave Bottoms, 39, had just left his job as an Army Chaplain at Walter Reed. The Anglican priest was in the back of the front car that slammed into the stopped train. When he saw the train buckling, it looked just like it would in the movies, he said.
“It felt like it was going in slow motion,” he said. “I started praying.”
In the chaotic moments after the crash, he walked to a young woman who had been pinned in between seats. She was hysterical, he said, but he began calming her—and the other passengers in the car.
The group began saying the Lord’s Prayer in unison.
(snip)
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.