subway incident blacked out

I'm getting some feedback, from both friends and strangers, on my account of our experience with the subway thing on Sunday, but I still haven't seen anything else in the media. The NYTimes never did include news about it in any of the editions delivered to our door here in Chelsea and I've seen no letters to editors [I've written to two dailies myself; is anyone else out there writing or calling?], and neither editorial nor opinion pieces discussing its significance. There's been a virtual blackout on news about this, and it continues today.

Remember that I was really only complaining about rescue response time and not the inescapable fact that the system is always going to be vulnerable to incidents whether accidental, deliberate or even terrorist-driven.

I suspect that we are not supposed to think about how much we are at risk in a public transit system most of us cannot avoid using. How much of this is deliberate (criminal) policy and how much of it is due to (criminal) neglect we can only speculate.

One of the most melancholy notes I've received is this one, which appears in the comments section of my original post:

You are correct about not seeing reports on this incident in the papers or on TV. I've looked for it myself as I have heard about it from my mom (who by the way doesn't even live in NYC.) Apparently there was a brief report on the incident on CNN. She called to ask me for more information only to hear that I have never heard about it.

All I have to say is that it reminds me of home - Serbia - where things like this, and worse, happen on daily basis and we never ever hear about it but remain living in an oblivion of a perfect communist society where flow of information is foreign terminology.

WNBC/Channel 4 had a story on its 11pm newscast. They showed about 10 seconds of video (and stamped it "exclusive" although UPN9/Channel 9 News already aired the same footage a couple days earlier) and recounted a story about the York Avenue fire 7/8 months ago and even footage from a subway fire in 1990 that killed two passengers. It clearly demonstrates that the MTA is not prepared to handle incidents of this kind. A truly sad fact.

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Published on March 3, 2004 3:36 PM.

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