A Tiny Fire in Chicago
So I finally have a functioning laptop again,and I can begin to catch up on some of the posts I've been meaning to do for some time. The first is short. We took the "L" downtown on June 30th for the Taste of Chicago (see next post), and were seated in the first car, as we like to do for opportunities such as this one. Going south on the tracks between Wilson and Sheridan, the train came to a stop, as it so often does. Usually, you have no idea what the cause is, but this time we did. Our driver got out to investigate:
FIRE!!
You can't see the flames very well, but they were there consuming a wooden tie next to the third rail of the northbound track. Our driver calmly returned to get a fire extinguisher. You can see the extinguisher is really just a stream of water (next picture), which prompted a discussion (Keren and me) of the third rail problem (see here or the Mythbusters, Episode 3) - why (thankfully) doesn't she get electrocuted when the water hits the third rail?
They couldn't have shut the power off on the tracks, because another train came along and waited for here to put the fire out. By this time, our brave photographer (Keren) was leaning out the door taking pictures with her new toy.
All of this begs the question of how often little fires like this happen. The train often stops for seemingly no reason, and this is one of the first times where we could clearly discern what was going one. A few passengers in our car were a bit panicky, but the driver was very calm and professional.
I looked around a bit on the web, and found other instances (Aug 2005, Jan 2005, Aug 2003) of this on CTA, one underground (the underground one is on the CTA Tattler - maybe we should contribute?). These were a bit larger apparently, and those that occurred underground have to be slightly distressing. From this extremely small sample, we can conclude with minimal confidennce that news-making CTA fires occur roughly once a year.
