Underground, Both Security and Logic Fail :
... police and fire officials ...
backed away yesterday from an earlier theory put forth by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that a homeless person had started the blaze to stay warm.
Fire Department spokesman, Michael R. Loughran, agreed that it was too early to draw conclusions. "Fire marshals are continuing to investigate who or what caused this suspicious fire," he said.
Metro Matters :
this fire, still under police investigation, has been ruled suspicious; police and fire officials now say it was set, though not necessarily by a homeless person, which was the initial theory.
Previous diaries: Mon, Tue. History of 8th Avenue Chambers St. / World Trade Center Station.
Media coverage neglects to mention the proximity of the fire to Ground Zero / former World Trade Center site.
Update [2005-1-27 1:10:12 by dotpeople]: Details of remediation.
Relay scavenging speeds recovery from current fire, but increases system-wide vulnerability to future fires or security incidents that damage existing relays,
www.nydailynews.com :
Asked how the TA was able to convert a five-year plan into a nine-month schedule, Reuter said engineers got a closer look at the damaged room yesterday - and
scavenged about 90 relays from elsewhere in the system.
... City Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) and state Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) called for legislative hearings on the system's vulnerability.
"If one homeless person can set a fire and disrupt the whole system ... what can one determined terrorist do?" Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan (D-Queens) asked at a budget hearing in Albany. "It's a very scary thought."
NYC Subway vulnerability to relay damage depends on ... France (!), www.nypost.com :
The relays destroyed by the fire are so antiquated that only two companies, Union Switch Signal in
Pittsburgh, and Alstom in
France, still make the parts.
Starting next week, up to 60 percent of A trains will be back in service. The figure increases to 80 percent in three months and to full capacity in six to nine months.
C train service will come back in six to nine months.
Subways use a "wayside color light block" signal system that is located along the tracks resembling traffic lights and typically requires thousands of wires and circuits.
Segments of track are divided into "blocks" - usually measuring a few hundred feet long - that are divided by joints built into the rails.
When the wheels of a train make contact with the joints - connected with an intricate set of cables - it indicates the train's presence in that area.
If the block is occupied, the system gives trains in nearby blocks a red signal, and forces them to stop.
If the area ahead is empty, signals give the motorman a green or yellow light.
Transit workers with two-way radios yesterday continued to manually dispatch trains through tunnels near the quarter-mile area where signals were knocked out in order to leave a safe distance between trains.
Workers can currently handle eight trains an hour - compared to the 24 that normally run on weekdays - and wait times during rush hour went from a usual 3 minutes to 12 minutes.
The A line, which carries 470,000 daily riders and runs from Inwood to southeastern Queens, has been severely limited.