MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2010


KLMNO


Malfunctioning escalator injures 4 at Metro station


L’Enfant Plaza incident ‘like being on a roller coaster,’ rider says


BY MARIA GLOD AND CHRIS L. JENKINS Metro riders said a crowded


escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza Station began to speed to danger- ous levels before it was halted Saturday afternoon, causing some passengers to fall as they got to the bottom. Melissa Robertson said she


was partway down when the steps began to move faster and faster. She grabbed her 7-year-old daughter with one arm, lifted her and clung to the rail with the other hand.Her husband, Peyton, picked up their 11-year-old son and climbed over the railing. “It was like being on a roller


coaster,” said Robertson, 44, of AnneArundelCounty. “Therewas nowhere to go. We were really accelerating as we were going down. People were starting to scream and panic.” Metro spokeswoman Angela


Gates said an escalator at the station’s Ninth and D Street SW entrance malfunctioned about 2 p.m. while descending into the station. She said she could not confirm reports of witnesses who said the escalator accelerated. Gates said that four people were treated for injuries that were not life-threateningandthat a station managerandtransit police officer were on the scene to help.


“We don’t know for sure what happened,” Gates said Sunday. She said the escalator has been taken out of service until an in- vestigation could be completed. The incident occurred as Met-


ro stations were crowded with people attending the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally on the Mall. Metro officials said a new Saturday ridership record was set, with 825,437 trips taken. The average number of trips taken on a Saturday is about 350,000. Although the cause of the inci-


dent was unclear,Metro has been struggling to maintain its aging escalator system. Riders have been frustrated by out-of-service escalators, and officials have said it is difficult to keep up with repairs.Metro has 588 escalators, more than any other transit agen- cy inNorth America. In December 2008, a stopped


escalator at Gallery Place Station suddenly began to move in re- verse, throwing some passengers backward. Twopeople were treat- ed at a hospital for scrapes and bruises,Metro officials said at the time. Joe Corey, 42, of Raleigh, N.C.,


was walking down an out-of-ser- vice escalator Saturday at L’En- fant when he noticed the escala- tor to his left began to speed up. Corey, who had gone to the


rally with his wife, Becky, 32, and infant daughter, Josie, said peo- ple on the runaway escalator be- gan scrambling onto the ramp that separated the two escalators. “People were trying to get to


me, so I dropped everything I had and tried to get to them,” Corey


said. “It was like a rip tide. . . . I was trying to grab anyone I could.” Corey said the incident lasted


about 45 seconds. “There were people who were coming away bloodied and with ripped pants,” he said. “It was not a simple ‘whoops, a couple of people fell off the escalator.’ It was pretty vi- cious.”


SamuelRobfogel of the District


was at the top of the bank of escalators when he sawpeople on the staircase below him begin to move faster. “It was likewatching a carnival


ride,” Robfogel said. “It went from nothing to ‘Oh, my God, it’s not stopping.’ ” Robfogel said he began trying


to turn back the crowd that was flowing into the station by telling people there was a problem with the escalator. He ran outside to summon help, but emergency personnel had arrived. “Escalators should never do


this,” Robfogel said. “Given the general concern about escalator maintenance, this is really trou- bling.” Melissa Robertson, who said


the skin rubbed off her fingertips where she clutched the rail, said the escalator stopped as she got to the bottom. She said that she managed to stay upright while holding her daughter but that about five or six people had fallen around her.


glodm@washpost.com jenkinsc@washpost.com


Staff writer Lena H. Sun contributed to this report.


Sink-or-swim time for Democrats in 4 congressional races in Va.


GOP likely to gain seats in 2nd, 5th districts, analyst says


BY BEN PERSHING With Republicans expected to


make gains in congressional rac- es across the country Tuesday, four vulnerable Virginia Demo- crats are fighting to avoid being swept away by a GOP wave. The battlefield stretches from


the Washington suburbs to the Tennessee border. In the Fairfax County-based


11th District, Rep. Gerald E. Con- nolly (D) is trying to fend off Oakton businessman Keith Fimi- an (R). In the 5th District, Rep. TomPerriello (D) welcomed Pres- identObamatoCharlottesvilleon Friday for his uphill race against state Sen. RobertHurt (R). In the Hampton Roads region,


Rep. Glenn Nye (D) is struggling to hold on to the 2nd District seat against auto dealer Scott Rigell (R). And in southwestern Virgin- ia’s9th District, veteranRep. Rick Boucher (D) is squaring off against state House Majority LeaderMorgan Griffith (R). Virginia broke toward Demo-


crats in 2008 — Obama won the state, and Connolly, Nye and Per- riello all snagged GOP-held seats. Now, the state appears to be breaking back. “The most likely scenario out


of Virginia is Republicans get two seats,andanythingbeyondthat is icing on the cake,” said Nathan L. Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Rigell and Hurt are favored to


beat Nye and Perriello, according to Rothenberg’s latest rankings. Connolly and Boucher remain fa- vored to hold their posts. “I could make the case for either Boucher or Connolly being the third seat, but I don’t think Republicans need towineither of those to get a majority,” Gonzales said. Connolly’s contest appears to


have become more competitive in the final weeks before Election Day. The Democratic Congressio-


JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Interns with FreedomWorks prepare boxes of campaign signs for shipment at the tea party group’s offices in the District.


nal Campaign Committee pumped more than $1 million into the district for hard-hitting TV ads, and the Connolly and Fimian campaigns have ads in heavy rotation. No polls of the race have been


released in several weeks, but Republicans say that their inter- nal numbers show Fimian in po- sition to pull an upset. Democrats say the race is close but continue to think Connolly will prevail, as he did when the two men met in 2008.


Connolly may have caught a


late break, as Fimian has been forced to backtrack in recent days after declaring in a TV interview that the 2007 Virginia Tech mas- sacre might have been avoided if more students on campus had been “packing heat.” Perhaps recognizing that Fair-


fax is relatively moderate on so- cial issues, Fimian said Friday on WTOP radio that it was “a horri- ble choice of words” and that he had “meant to say” there should have been more security guards on campus. In the 5th District, Obama’s


visit Friday brought national at- tention to both candidates. While Perriello was rallying with Obama in Charlottesville, Hurt appeared Friday night on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News


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6-4-1


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Channel. Obama praised Perriello as someone who came to Washing- ton “to do what was right,” while Republicans suggested the rally proved Perriello was a rubber stamp for the national Democrat- ic agenda. Other big-name surrogates


were thick on Virginia’s leaf-cov- ered ground over the weekend. Sen. Mark Warner (D) was scheduled to do weekend events with Nye, Boucher and Perriello, and Sen. James Webb (D) had a gathering planned with Connolly. On the Republican side, Vir-


ginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II were scheduled to crisscross the state Sunday and Monday to rally with all fourGOPcandidates — Fimian, Griffith, Hurt and Rigell. In the 9th District, the last


publicly released poll of the con- test showed Boucher and Griffith in a statistical tie. That marked a departure from most previous surveys of the race, whichshowed Boucher with a clear lead. Nye and Rigell were similarly


close in the last public poll of the 2nd District contest, although in that case the Republican has led in nearly every other survey. Ben.Pershing@wpost.com


Let there be light Nearly as much fun as dogs


are teenagers. The other day, our resident teenager told me that I needed to remind her to change the light bulb in her room. There’s a joke in there


somewhere, but I couldn’t think of it right away. What I did think, and say, was this: “Why do you


W


hen is the best time to be a dog? Pretty much any time.


Dogs live in the moment. Dogs


go with the flow. Dogs roll with it. Dogs make do with what they’ve got. In winter, our black Lab,


Charlie, loves frolicking in the snow. In spring, he likes sniffing the newgrass—then eating it. In summer, he enjoys lounging in the hot sun. But like a lot of dogs (like a lot of humans), I think his favorite season is autumn. Dogs such as Charlie are made


to walk through fallen leaves. When I walk him in the autumn, listening to the rustling he makes as he trots along, I’m reminded of how delicate Charlie actually is. Yes, he weighs 75 pounds, but he flicks his forefeet with a certain daintiness, bends what I guess are his wrists with a certain elegance. The pads of his feet may be rough, but inside he is a dandy, the desiccated leaves the equivalent of the carefully strewn sand of a soft-shoe dancer. Not that Charlie is overly precious when it comes to the leaves. I don’t know exactly why, but dogs are especially fond of peeing on piles of leaves. Do mounds of leaves—their photosynthesizing duties done— exude some chemical odor irresistible to dogs? Or is a raised berm of any sort just too attractive a target to pass up? Is it a canvas awaiting a brushstroke, a plinth awaiting a statue? Whatever the reason, an


autumn walk with Charlie is longer than its summer or winter counterpart.He pulls at his leash, eager to sniff at the leaves. He is a connoisseur of leaves— an annoying connoisseur, actually.He seems to sniff every leaf in a pile, every blade and vein and rib. What is he looking for? What catastrophe awaits if he pees on the wrong leaf? Charlie’s favorite kind of fall


day is one like we had in the middle of last week: sunny, but with a chill in the air, the sky a deep blue. I was working at home when


Charlie came up to me. That’s usually a sign that he wants something, although what I think he wants most is for me to magically pull a meatball from my pocket and toss it to him. I got up and opened the back


door to let him out. But Charlie didn’t want to go out.He just wanted to look out.He plopped down in a pool of sunlight and breathed in the smells of autumn. The breeze picked up, and crinkled leaves, like tea- stained love letters, blewin. The most colorful tree in our


back yard was a dogwood. Charlie approved.


JOHN KELLY'S WASHINGTON


EZ RE Dog days of autumn


B3


JOHN KELLY/THE WASHINGTON POST


Charlie sits at the back door, where he can see the fallen leaves and feel the cool breeze of the season he seems to enjoy most.


need me to remind you to change your light bulb? I would think the darkness would do a pretty good job of that.” It’s a funny thing about


teenagers and reminders, though. They don’t like to be reminded of certain things: You need to clean your bathroom. Did you write those thank-you notes like I asked? Don’t you have homework you need to finish? Dad, I know. Geez! You don’t


need to remind me! But forget to remind them of


something obvious, and you may get, say, a panicked and accusatory phone call from the school bus: “Why didn’t you remind me to putmy English


paper inmy backpack?” Oh they’re smart, those


teenagers. Take homework. Our teenager deploys homework like a defensive shield. Almost any request for domestic assistance is answered with “I have homework.” How can we compete with


that? Don’t we want her to do her homework? I suppose it must be what


living with Alexander Fleming was like. “Honey,”Mrs. Fleming would say, “don’t forget that you promised to take out the trash.” “I’mbusy discovering penicillin,”Mr. Fleming would say.


“Oh, all right. I’ll do it.” kellyj@washpost.com


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