{"id":333,"date":"2007-02-20T21:56:29","date_gmt":"2007-02-21T01:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2007\/02\/20\/man-jumps-on-red-line-tracks\/"},"modified":"2007-02-21T14:18:02","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T18:18:02","slug":"man-jumps-on-red-line-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2007\/02\/20\/man-jumps-on-red-line-tracks\/","title":{"rendered":"Man jumps on Red Line tracks at Harvard Square T Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emergency<\/div>\n
Emergency responders at Harvard Square at 8:19 PM<\/div>\n

Shortly after 8 PM, as I was crossing the overpass just north of the Yard I heard sirens, under me and on Mass Ave. As I crossed the Yard headed for the T, more sirens. Something big was happening. When I stepped out of the Johnston Gate, I saw a sea of flashing lights. Out of Town News was surrounded by emergency equipment. Cambridge Fire had a ladder truck, a remote controlled nozzle truck, special services truck [Tactical Rescue 1<\/a>], and other units. There was at least one patrol car and one paddy wagon from the MBTA police and several commercial ambulances.<\/p>\n

The station was still open with T personnel directing North bound passengers to shuttle buses at Johnston Gate. Since Inbound trains were still running I was allowed to go through the turnstile, but I went up the Outbound ramp to see what I could learn. A woman sheepishly told me someone had been hit. I could see that the train was stopped with only the head of one car in the station. Then I heard an MBTA officer calling in that a man had jumped on the tracks. There was a witness.<\/p>\n

I thought to investigate further, but it made me feel like a ghoul. I remembered the “Subway” episode of Homicide: Life on the Street<\/a>. I did not want to see it for real. What was my responsibility? A professional journalist would have marched up the platform and asked the emergency workers what was going on. My experience as a Unix system mother told me that right after a crash is just the time you don’t want to be answering questions. WIth lives at stake, focus is critical. What should a ‘citizen journalist’ do. I decided to take what I had, make a quick post, and e-mail the ‘pros’ at the Crimson. When I returned at 9:30PM only about 1\/3 of the emergency vehicles were still there. The train had not moved. I was looking from the North end of the platform this time. I saw no victims.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: The Crimson reports that the man hit by the train survived and is likely to recover<\/a>. There is no mention of injuries to passengers due to the motorman slamming on the brakes. I would guess that there were minor injuries treated, but no hospitalizations. The report doesn’t capture the magnitude of the emergency response. It was impressive and I don’t believe excessive. Not knowing just what they are facing, I would rather our public employees show up with too much rather than too little strength. I’m proud of them.
\nI found no other reports of the event on Yahoo news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emergency responders at Harvard Square at 8:19 PM Shortly after 8 PM, as I was crossing the overpass just north of the Yard I heard sirens, under me and on Mass Ave. As I crossed the Yard headed for the T, more sirens. Something big was happening. When I stepped out of the Johnston Gate, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}