As my friend, Dan, said, “Man, who needs terrorists when you’ve got bums?” From ‘C’ Sickness on the Subway:
A fire in a subway control room has put the C line out of service for up to five years and caused serious problems on the A line that will make the commute miserable for hundreds of thousands of subway riders, officials said yesterday.The unstaffed room containing 600 electrical devices called ‘relays’ that are used to power signals and switches along a segment of the vital Eighth Avenue line were destroyed Sunday in the blaze.
Cops blamed a vagrant who set a shopping cart full of wood blocks ablaze six feet into the tracks at the Chambers Street station. Cops are searching for the derelict.
The flames quickly spread across the ceiling and along a wall, igniting wires that led to the locked control room.
The blaze melted thousands of the wires and knocked out power to dozens of signals and switches.
‘It’s major, major damage,’ said Transit Authority president Larry Reuter.
“It’s a barbecue. It’s black and melted.”