RTD: A Line Power Outage Was Caused By Lightning Strike
DENVER (CBS4) - RTD officials say Tuesday's power outage on the A Line was caused by a lightning strike which broke a cable.
The outage led to a shutdown of the train-to-the-plane service on Tuesday afternoon.
On Wednesday at midday A Line service was back running smoothly. Several passengers told CBS4 that even knowing about Tuesday's incident as well as some other recent problems, they would still take the chance and ride the train because of its convenience.
A different sentiment would likely be shared from many of the 80 people were stuck on one of the A Line trains for more than an hour on Tuesday.
They train stalled on an overpass 50 feet in the air after the power went out. The passengers had to stay on the train for more than an hour as RTD hoped for a restoration of power but were finally escorted off by emergency crews.
"We were all just kind of sitting there at first slightly confused, and then when they told us it had shut down we were just like 'Okay...'" said Christopher Chase. "It got hot and sweaty and a little crazy for a little bit there."
They were then shuttled by bus to Denver International Airport, and some of those people reportedly missed their flights due to the delay. Chase had a job interview lined up that he had to reschedule.
RTD says the evacuation process taken on Tuesday was something they practiced on that same overpass during the new commuter rail line's year-long testing phase.
RTD spokeswoman Tina Jaquez said they can't practice for every problem scenario, but the transportation district is working on avoiding having this issue every time there's a lightning storm.
"We can't anticipate every single issue that could come up," Jaquez said. "We certainly try. But now that we know this could be an issue we'll absolutely look at it closer.
Jaquez said RTD is apologetic about the inconvenience for passengers.
"We certainly are going to take this issue to heart and look at our system and make sure that we can avoid these sort of things in the future," she said.
