Long before 9/11, the MTA has a long standing policy of allowing transit workers to make their own calls in times of crisis. That policy allowed R train operator Hector Ramirez help evacuate more than one hundred people from lower Manhattan on the morning of Sept 11.
Ramirez, 41, was operating the 8:12 a.m. R train out of the 95st in Brooklyn that morning. By the time the first plane struck he already in the Manhattan - Brooklyn tunnel.
“We were hold outside the station [Whitehall St. - South Ferry]. We contacted the command center and they told us to continue service but bypass Cortlandt St. We got to Rector St. and could see heavy smoke,” he recalled.
Typical TA policy instructs operators to skip a station if there is a smoke condition.
By the time Ramirez got to Cortlandt St., he said, the platform was full of smoke and packed with people. He already tapped the horn to signal that he would skip the stop.
“People usually point at their watch or give me the finger,” he said. “Not this time... Some people were waving, there was heavy smoke. ... One woman in particular had a cloth covering her mouth. All I could see was her eyes and there terror in her eyes. She was scared to death. She was the person who got me to stop.”
The train stopped. Riders already on board were told not to get off and everybody on the platform was able to get on the train.
“We defied orders and stopped the train and cleared out the platform,” Ramirez said.He and his conductor, Joseph Murrary, called it a “judgment call.”
“It’s phenomenal. When you think about it, we didn’t lose any customers or employees and there were no known serious injuries at all,” Ramirez said.Thank you Hector and Joseph.
-- Chuck Bennett amNY.com
Comments (1)
The MTA has a long standing policy of independent judgement during a crisis? Who told you that? Ask the Token Booth Clerk at the Cortland Street station who was ordered to stay in the booth until relieved by a supervisor while the buildings were about to fall. It was a cop who told the Agent to get out.
Joe Campbell
TWU Local 100 Member