Berri-UQÀM evacuated over gas
Berri-UQÀM station was evacuated Friday evening around 8, and three metro lines were also down for most of an hour, after some sort of irritating gas – CTV says pepper spray – was detected. Service resumed around 9; there have been no arrests.
Blork 11:16 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
What a goddamn mess. I was at McGill when it was announced that the orange, green, and yellow lines were all down because of something at Berri/UQAM. Then they announced that Berri/UQAM was being evacuated. Then they announced that McGill (where I was) was being evacuated! We all had to leave the train and the platform, being shoo-ed up the stairs by Metro cops blowing whistles. All the while the announcement saying that service would resume at 8:55.
Seriously? If Berri/UQAM is evacuated, and the station where I was was evacuated, then presumably stations all along the lines were evacuated. It felt like there was a terrorist attack going on or something, all the while the very real EVACUATE! messages being interspersed with a canned message that service will resume in 10 minutes. What the actual f*ck?
I ended up on a quest all over downtown trying to find a bus to take me east (FAIL) and finally had my sweetie come all the way over from Longueuil to pick me up. By then it was probably 9:30 and the system was back up, but I wouldn’t have known that because they booted everyone out of the goddamn station! GRRRRRRR!
Spi 12:07 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
Blork do you have a smart phone? Your bus problem and knowing the system was back up could have been easily solved by using google maps and following the twitter account for the different metro lines.
Blork 12:18 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
@Spi, you’re missing the point. Three lines down and apparent system-wide station evacuation does not seem like something that can be resolved in ten minutes. The problem was conflicting messages and the illusion that something much bigger was going down, so i just left and went to Plan B because it seemed like Plan A was out of the question. I didn’t even bother to check the web site for STM because I was very involved in trying to make Plan B work. My main question is why did they evacuate McGill? Did they evacuate other stations? Why the huge reaction to a bit of pepper spray?
walkerp 13:41 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
Feeling like they need to re-evaluate their risk management analysis at the STM.
Uatu 15:59 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
I think the STM is afraid that pepper spray can be spread throughout the metro because of the way the air is forced into and out of the tunnels whenever a metro arrives and leaves? If that’s the case then it reinforces the case to encase the tracks with a glass barrier
Kate 18:37 on 2019-11-09 Permalink
Uatu, how would a glass barrier, which can’t possibly be taller than about ten feet, contain a gas?