As the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) begins its long overdue Metro SafeTrack plan, WAMU 88.5 begins a series of news stories covering the project with a look at the lingering effects for the family of Carol Glover, who died in the January 12, 2015 L’Enfant Plaza smoke incident. Patrick Regan and the Regan Zambri & Long law firm is representing the family of Ms. Glover in their lawsuit against Metro.
An interview with Ms. Glover’s son sixteen months after her death reveals the difficulty of dealing with the constant public reminders of the incident which took his mother’s life. According to Marcus Glover, “The practical, reliability and safety concerns, but there is also just the powerful reminder of my mom’s suffering and it’s difficult for me to even reconcile stepping onto one of those trains at this point.”
As the investigations following the smoke incident continued, the family learned that deferred maintenance and shoddy inspections on the Metro system created an atmosphere which led to Carol Glover’s death. Following the NTSB hearing, Mr. Glover said, “I think it is clear that there has been a critical lapse in leadership and structure and accountability within Metro.”
Concerning Metro: “It’s their system and they need to be the ones to take responsibility for it. And I think it is clear they haven’t taken adequate responsibility for that,” he said. “These are things that should have been done years ago and it shouldn’t have come to the point where you have major shutdowns in order to fix what should have been routine problems.”