I Told You Not To Lean Against The Door!

Next to getting your foot run over by an 18-wheeler while waiting to cross at an intersection, this is probably everyone’s second-worst fear:

A subway train roared underground with some doors open, sources told the Daily News yesterday, describing a frightening ride for the passengers.

The Manhattan-bound A train left the Grant Ave. station in Brooklyn with some doors open late Saturday night and didn’t stop until the first few cars reached the next station, at Euclid Ave., a transit source said.

“The doors were in fact open,” another source said.

The Transit Authority has launched an investigation, said TA spokesman Paul Fleuranges.

“This incident should NOT have happened,” Fleuranges said in a statement. “If it happened as you describe it . . . then there were some very serious violations of our operating rules and procedures. We are all relieved there were no injuries to our customers or crew.”

The train was taken to a TA yard for a battery of tests, and the crew was taken off the rails, Fleuranges said. Both the motorman and conductor were given drug and alcohol tests, a standard investigatory move.

According to the transit source, the conductor told supervisors that he left his cab at the Grant Ave. station to see what was preventing a door, or doors, from closing. As he walked from car to car, the train took off, he said. After some difficulty, the conductor contacted the motorman by intercom and the train was halted.

NYPD Terror Drill: “More Information Is The Key”

The NYPD runs a terror-attack drill focused on schools:

During the early part of the exercise, the information from the Staten Island school is sketchy.

The narrator tells them the terrorists have grabbed an NYPD radio, allowing them to listen in on what cops are planning. And this forces police to think of alternate ways of communicating.

Then, the narrator tells them, the terrorists release a teacher, who reports that four of the attackers are wearing bulky black vests with wires protruding — and are growing increasingly agitated.

Some of the students manage to call their parents by cellphone, and panicking moms and dads gather at the school, he said.

Suddenly, a large explosion goes off on the roof. More shots are heard inside.

What should the cops do?

Members of the Technical Assistance Response Unit — known as the “Mission: Impossible” squad — wanted to place eavesdropping devices in the school so they could find out more about what was going on.

Finally, the attackers release their demands — they want terrorists jailed overseas to be freed or they’ll kill at least five of the hostages.

“Do we go in?” Browne asked.

Different ideas are suggested. Bomb Squad and hostage negotiators weigh in. More information, many agree, is the key.

One big concern was to not over-commit police resources — to one or both of the schools — as doing so might leave cops vulnerable should a third crisis erupt.

I’m hoping they’re a little more prepared than “we need more information” . . .

Everything You Thought Was For Your Protection Actually Just Makes It Worse

Great, now you tell us:

The concrete and metal barriers put up outside buildings in Manhattan deemed possible terrorist targets after Sept. 11 are being removed.

Counterterrorism experts said the planters and traffic medians known as jersey barriers caused pedestrian traffic problems, were in some cases never really needed and could shatter into dangerous flying debris through an explosion in others.

Barriers have been removed at 30 of some 50 to 70 skyscrapers, office buildings and museums, a Transportation Department spokeswoman confirmed last night. [Emph. added because what the fuck!?]

Next you’ll tell us that Operation Hercules is a bad idea because it leaves vulnerable too many police officers in one place . . .

That’s “Kills” As In “Body Of Water” . . .

The GAO reports “large quantities of radium” in Great Kills Park:

High levels of radium were found in Gateway National Recreation Area in Great Kills when anti-terrorism officials conducted a helicopter survey of city radiation sources last summer to prepare for potential terrorist attacks using so-called dirty radiation bombs, but that fact was revealed only yesterday in a congressional survey.

The aerial survey found 80 unexpected radiation “hot spots” around the city, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which stated that the NYPD had singled out “a local park” that was “contaminated by large quantities of radium.”

NYPD officials confirmed that the park was Gateway’s Great Kills Park, a portion of which served as a city landfill until the 1930s. It became federal parkland in 1972.

A piece of metal equipment — possibly part of an old X-ray machine — was found underground on Aug. 2, 2005, and it was removed the next day from a portion of an area between the Great Kills Ranger station and the model airplane field, said Tom O’Connell, site manager for the park. An investigation by federal environmental officials found that the radiation levels posed no current risk to human health, according to officials with close knowledge of the survey.

. . .

Vincent Scavuzzo, another Great Kills resident, said he’s skeptical that everything is OK. But Scavuzzo added that the news would not stop him from taking daily walks in the park with his wife, Toni.

“I don’t like the idea that they found something like that,” he said. “Maybe they should do some testing, test the soil, test the water. Anything that’s around here, they should do tests.”

Elaine Borruso agreed.

“You’d hate to think you could come into contact with [radiological material],” she said, adding that she wants the National Park Service to do more testing.

Officials downplayed the threat:

O’Connell, who worked with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy during the investigation, said people should not worry about the news.

“It is no more harmful for a human than having a cigarette on a sunny day,” said O’Connell, who was present during the EPA and DOE’s investigation. “But the only way it would have that effect is if you were sitting in the hole [where the equipment was found].”

He Came Dancing Across The Water, Cortez — What A Killer

Neil Young has dispatched a crew of soundmen to steal our soul:

All week, a man with a microphone has walked the subway platforms to collect the clattering of the rivets and the whistling horns, the distortion in the loudspeaker, the hush in the compressor’s song and the dying of the brake like some wounded thing.

Even in that racket, some find value. The recordings are the chief selling point of a new reproduction of a subway train by the Lionel model train company made under a license from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for completion by year’s end.

Other companies have made models before, but this one pays unparalleled attention to sonic detail, recreating the subterranean soundscape in elaborate hi-fi to win the favor of collectors and self-styled train geeks, keepers of a nostalgic anachronism to rank alongside comic books and baseball cards.

Among their number count the musician Neil Young, so devoted that he conceived a control system to reproduce the sounds of the rails, then acquired a minority interest in Lionel more than a decade ago.

“Realism is the byword,” Mr. Young said by telephone. “It’s a heavy thing moving down a track, like a real thing even though it’s a miniature.”

. . .

Recording began below Brooklyn on Monday, in the tunnels of the New York Transit Museum. There [Bruce R.] Koball was joined by a few transit supervisors and Mark Wolodarsky, an off-duty conductor. Mr. Wolodarsky was standing in the cab of Car 9306, a model R33s introduced in 1963 to run the 20-minute route from Times Square to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens.

“I’m more or less ready to rock and roll here,” Mr. Koball declared.

Mr. Wolodarsky activated the train’s generator to charge the batteries, then opened and closed the doors. The men on the platform deemed the action too fast, and Mr. Wolodarsky tried again.

“There was no puff of air,” lamented a supervisor, James Harris. Mr. Wolodarsky tried again. In this manner they recorded the compressors and the generator, the brakes and the brake release. There were two long buzzes and two short, signals between conductor and motorman, then a low whistle, a guttural rumble and a high lonesome sound.

. . .

“It’s a symphony of motion and sound,” Mr. Young said. “New York City. What’s more American than that?”