WASHINGTON, January 13 (Sputnik) — The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has taken over the investigation into the Monday accident at one of Washington's busiest rail stations, NTSB spokesperson Peter Knudson told Sputnik on Tuesday.
On Monday afternoon, a six-car Yellow Line train southbound from the L'Enfant Metro Station in downtown DC suddenly stopped about 800 feet inside the tunnel causing the tunnel and the train to fill up with smoke.
"We were informed that one person was fatally injured and there was a number of casualties," Knudson said.
Following the incident local media outlets reported that passengers waited for help for about an hour in the smoke-filled cars, some lost consciousness and were choking from the smoke.
Safety officials treated and evaluated 200 people at the scene and then took 84 to nearby hospitals. One person died during the incident.
"Our units responded and made our way through and was able to offload passengers from the train that was at the tunnel and treated and evaluated about 200 patients transported about 84 of them most of them with a variety of injuries," DC Fire Department spokesperson Tim Wilson told Sputnik.
"We'll be meeting with them and laying out how the investigation will proceed, the areas that we're looking at and the information we expect them to be able to provide us," Knudson said.
Although the cause of the incident is still not entirely clear, Knudson said that the NTSB knows that the source of the smoke came from an electrical arcing event with the trackside power cables.
Following the metro incident, at about 8 pm, WMATA announced on its official Twitter account that the L'Enfant lines had been restored.
