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Arlington T
Jul. 11th, 2007 06:30 pmI headed for the T about quarter after 5. The 'temporary' entrance includes a long corridor, with fire doors towards the platform end of it, doors that have large top and bottom panels of glass so people can see through them. There was a crowd near the doors tonight, which I didn't think much of (rush hour, after all, and it's not a wide corridor), until I got close enough to see that one door's glass had shattered, covering the area in glass, so people were moving very gingerly. I was thankful I wore solid shoes today, not flip-flops or sandals. I edged my way around the corner, crunching on all the glass fragments, and saw that a woman had been hit with flying glass: there were cuts down the back of both shins that a man was dabbing at with a handkerchief. There were spots of blood on her sandals and on the floor, too. There was already a crowd of cell-phone-enabled people there, so I hurried to catch the train, hoping she would be ok.
I ran into Mattlistener on the red line part of my commute, and we compared notes; he'd been a couple of minutes behind me. By the time he passed, someone was starting to sweep up the glass, and he noted that it was lucky (well, planned, I assume, but still) that it was safety glass. Even with it breaking into little prisms rather than shards, there are still a lot of edges that could cut. I hadn't really paid attention to the doors before, though I'd figured out that they were fire doors, lest the corridor become a chimney in the event of a fire. I hadn't realized that they were held open with magnets. The unbroken door wasn't staying open, so perhaps there was some kind of magnet failure, in addition to whatever wind was blowing down the hall (most of the glass was inside, consistent with wind sweeping down from outside, despite there not being a direct line to the surface). He also noticed that the injured woman had cuts on her hand(s?), too; I hope none of the cuts are serious...
I assume they'll rethink what the doors are made of when they fix them. A narrow vertical strip of glass would allow visual contact without being as fragile. And having the kind of glass with wire through it would presumably be stronger. Even better would be some kind of shatter-proof plastic, if there is such that can withstand hot enough temperatures.
I ran into Mattlistener on the red line part of my commute, and we compared notes; he'd been a couple of minutes behind me. By the time he passed, someone was starting to sweep up the glass, and he noted that it was lucky (well, planned, I assume, but still) that it was safety glass. Even with it breaking into little prisms rather than shards, there are still a lot of edges that could cut. I hadn't really paid attention to the doors before, though I'd figured out that they were fire doors, lest the corridor become a chimney in the event of a fire. I hadn't realized that they were held open with magnets. The unbroken door wasn't staying open, so perhaps there was some kind of magnet failure, in addition to whatever wind was blowing down the hall (most of the glass was inside, consistent with wind sweeping down from outside, despite there not being a direct line to the surface). He also noticed that the injured woman had cuts on her hand(s?), too; I hope none of the cuts are serious...
I assume they'll rethink what the doors are made of when they fix them. A narrow vertical strip of glass would allow visual contact without being as fragile. And having the kind of glass with wire through it would presumably be stronger. Even better would be some kind of shatter-proof plastic, if there is such that can withstand hot enough temperatures.