Burned cars at the post office

 

I don't go to the post office very often, but it's the holidays so I found myself at the Westlake post office next to the Home Depot and Montgomery mall.

What to my wondering eyes should appear, but two burned cars in the parking lot. I don't know how long they've been there, clearly it hadn't just happened.  It looks like the fire started in the engine compartment of the gas-powered car in the back and spread to the car in front of it.  It must have sucked for both people, bad enough that your car catches on fire, but even worse to be the collateral damage.

Here's a closer view of where the fire originated. It totally destroyed the interior of both cars too.

 

Here's another view, this time without so many cars around.

 

Another accident at the big curve

 

Another rainy day, another accident on the outer loop of Interstate 495 at the "Big Curve" in Bethesda, MD. Traffic is backed up past Old Georgetown Road and the backup continues to grow, even though some lanes do get by. According to WTOP, this happened about 10 minutes until 1pm and the two left lanes are blocked.

Like a twig

This was the scene at the beginning of the week on Greentree Road in Bethesda, MD. There clearly had been an accident where a car (yes I am comforable saying it was a car, not a bicycle) knocked down and broke this telephone pole and the fire hydrant next to it. You can see good sized gouges in the ground where the telephone pole hit. Someone must have been going well above the speed limit to do this amount of damage.

Woman hit by school bus in Bethesda, MD

Around 1:30 this afternoon a woman was struck and seriously injured by a school bus in front of Bethesda Elementary school, 7600 Arlington Rd., Bethesda, MD. Five students were believed to be on the bus at the time of the accident, none of them were injured. The woman later died from her injuries.

As of 4:00pm, Arlington Road between Old Georgetown Road and Edgemoor Lane in both directions was still closed for accident investigation. Alternate routes were crowded.

Update: 5:25pm: Arlington Rd in both directions is now open.

Sources:
Washington Post
WUSA 9

A car drove into a Bethesda, MD Salon yesterday

Just before 3pm yesterday (October 6th) an 82 year old woman turned into the driveway of the office building at 6931 Arlington Rd in Bethesda, MD, drove over a curb and into the front of the Citrine Salon & Spa. The driver and two employees of the salon were taken to Suburban Hospital.

I went by this morning and took a couple of pictures. They have boarded up the front of the salon, I wouldn't expect it to be opened today.


More information:
Washington Post (including a picture of the car in the store)
WTOP

Road Closed, Intersection of Bradley Blvd and Arlington Rd in Bethesda, MD

Bradley Blvd at Arlington Road was closed in both directions while police investigate a car fire.

Update 9:30am:

WTOP news reports that police found the minivan engulfed in flames after getting a report of a car fire, the driver was still inside the car, dead.

Bradely Boulevard road is now open in both directions.

Red Line train wreck, morning update

Photo by twitpic user davidcorndc.

There is still a significant impact from yesterday's accident on metro's Red Line. The red line between Brookland-CUA and Silver Spring is still closed and will remain so for at least the morning rush hour but probably for the whole day. There will be no service at the Takoma or Ft. Totten stations. (The metro website says that Brookand will not have service, but a more recent message on twitter says that it will be open.) release There will be no MARC Brunswick line service today. Shuttle buses will operate between Silver Spring and Rhode Island Avenue stations, but that will not be able to handle a normal rush hour volume.

Your alternatives are fairly limited. They do have bus service but a bus holds about 50 people and a single metro car holds 100+ so it will be a slow trip. You may be able to find a regularly scheduled metro bus line that goes near you want to go, check out the metro link at the bottom of this post. Some roads near the accident are closed.

It appears that one train was stopped waiting for permission to pull into a station when another train ran into the back of it just after 5 pm yesterday. Computers are supposed to act as a fail-safe and prevent trains from getting too close to each other but that didn't work.

Seven people are confirmed dead and more than 70 people were transported to area hospitals. This is only the second crash in Metro's history where passengers were killed. The other one was January 13, 1982 when three people died, the same time as the Air Florida flight 90 disaster

Update 8:35 AM: The death toll was revised down from Nine to Seven.

Sources:

• Metro
• Twitter
• WTOP
• ABC 7
  

Another Red Line derailment, 2 dead

At least two people has died and several people are trapped and injured after a Metro Red Line train derailed and collided with another Metro train, officials say.

The six-car train derailed and then collided with another train between the Takoma Park and Fort Totten stations around 5 p.m. Monday.

Naturally, the metrorail red line alerts e-mail are euphemistic to the point of being a lie. "Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Ave and Silver Spring stations due to a train experiencing mechanical difficulties outside of Fort Totten station." A train derailing then another train hitting it is a bit more than "Mechanical difficulties".

Sources:

• WTOP
• Washington Post
• Metro Twitter feed
• Twitter #redline
  

Update 6:40pm, added a couple of screen grabs from channel seven. Channel 7 also reports that there are 3 people still on the train, no word on if they are dead, injured, or just trapped.

Accident, Northbound Wisconsin Ave at Montgomery Ave, Bethesda, MD

There was an accident today at the corner of Wisconsin Ave (MD-355) and Montgomery Avenue, a cab and a car collided, the cab ran up on the sidewalk and hit a building. It also knocked over a fire hydrant. fire hydrants don't shoot up geysers of water when you knock them over like they do in the movies. For a short time two right lanes of northbound MD-355 were blocked and two lanes of Montgomery Avenue were blocked. Everything is pretty much cleaned up now, I just saw the towtruck that came to get the cab.


[where: Bethesda, MD]

Falling from a building

Not something you want to try yourself, but someone was cleaning the outside windows at 7475 Wisconsin Ave, Bethesda MD today and fell two or three stories. This is the building with the red neon "crab" at the top at the corner of MD-355 and East-West Hwy. Emergency workers got there pretty quickly and got him in a ambulance. Everything is back to normal now, the other workers are back on the building.