BROOKLYN, NEW YORK (PIX11) – Passengers took to social media to describe the “absolutely brutal” scene as thousands of people got stuck underground on F trains Wednesday.
In a video posted to TikTok, Maia Star McCann described Wednesday’s scene from a crowded subway car stuck between Jay Street-Metro Tech and Bergen Street. According to the MTA, 3,500 passengers were rescued from two F trains stuck underground due to a power failure.
“We’ve been trapped underground for an hour, there’s no wifi, there’s no air conditioning,” McCann said in the video.
A half-hour later and still stuck, McCann describes a back-and-forth as passengers wait to see if they’ll be evacuated. Passengers can be seen looking out the windows into a dark tunnel as some FDNY personnel walk by.
The mood lightened when people were told they would be evacuated, but there was some confusion before the straphangers got out. People were “justifiably pissed off,” another passenger Ryan McCarthy said in a post to X.
“It’s like a game of telephone,” McCann said. “No one knows what’s going on.”
More photos and videos posted to social media show the passengers walking on the tracks through tunnels and graffiti-covered staircases.
"Absolutely brutal commute," said one passenger.
McCann said people started to get concerned about kids and missed engagements. One passenger said she missed a dinner reservation and was still charged a cancelation fee despite sending a video stuck in the tunnel.
“The only city in the world where you can send this video to the restaurant to explain why you missed your dinner res and still get charged the no show fee,” she said.
Despite the chaos, many passengers said the MTA and FDNY were very calm and helpful, and the straphangers helped each other out by passing out food and peed between cars, Anders Nelson told Gothamist.
“It was kind of exciting to walk [through] a tunnel with my F train comrades,” Jillian Marshall said on Instagram.
Scenes aboveground show the passengers coming up through a staircase in the sidewalk with the help of FDNY personnel.
On Thursday morning, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she directed the MTA and Con Edison to do a "full review" of the incident.
"New Yorkers deserve a world-class subway system, and thousands of commuters experienced unacceptable service issues last night due to an electrical issue. No one deserves to be trapped underground for two hours," Hochul said.
Emily Rahhal is a digital reporter who has covered New York City since 2023 after reporting in Los Angeles for years. She joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of her work here and follow her on Twitter here.
Article From:
pix11.com
English (US) ·