The Washington Times picked up what may become an emerging angle from the Metro Crash---the tensions between WMATA and the D.C. Fire Department. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin basically called out WMATA for initially downplaying the extent of the crash. The Times writes:

"Fire officials stated bluntly Monday night that Metro's original description of the accident understated its magnitude, and it was only when the first rescuers arrived at the scene that the sort of help needed was finally summoned.

'A little after five o'clock we responded to what was believed to be a small incident,' D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said. 'The first arriving company recognized the fact that apparently two trains had collided.' Fire officials eventually sounded three alarms, summoning hundreds of rescuers and implementing their mass- casualty operations."

It's unclear whether rescue work was delayed as a result or whether WMATA or 911 dispatchers made errors in communicating the severity of the crash. "[The Office of Unified Communications] is not under our purview," explains Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite. "We're not responsible for OUC....I would be curious to hear what the first 911 call was reporting."

Fire Department Spokesperson Alan Etter refused to say when the department sounded three alarms and summoned all those rescue workers. "It was an evolving event---resources were called as they were needed," he stated in an e-mail to City Desk. "In other words, nobody jumped up and said---this is a third alarm incident---at the height of involvement we had an equivalent of three alarms on scene---more than 200 personnel--with mutual aid, etc."

The department's own notification records point to such a response. It's unclear whether or not that response was timely.

At 5:23 p.m., the Fire Department issued what may have been its first notification noting the Metro train derailment and that it was "above ground, train involved."

At 5:40 p.m., a second notification came out describing that one train was on top of another. It listed the staging area for emergency personnel at 2nd and Nicholson.

At 5:41 p.m., a third notification was sent out noting that the command center had been established to support the emergency efforts. All off-duty battalion chiefs were to call in placed on standby.

At 5:54 p.m., a fourth notification was sent out announcing that different radio channels had been established for the rescue.

Crosswhite says the scene was not chaotic, adding that the department has two mass casualty units that responded. He is not sure if they were on the scene when he arrived at 5:30 p.m. "I really don't know," he explains. "I seem to think they were already there---I want to say in the staging area."

Crosswhite ended up driving an ambulance.

Rubin responded to the Washington Post's questions on the WMATA issue this afternoon:

"Firefighters on their way to the Metro crash site yesterday they were unaware that there was a horrific fatal collision and thought they were responding to a 'small incident,' D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin told The Post's Allison Klein.

They initially were dispatched to the two Metro stations -- Takoma Park and Ft. Totten -- before they located the mile marker of the crash. But responders got to the scene within six minutes, Rubin said, and 'performed in an exceptional way.'

'The instant we laid eyes on it, this was declared a major operation,' Rubin said.

At Fenty's press conference just after 5 p.m. today, Rubin says Fire Department responded quickly to disaster.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

"9NEWS NOW has confirmed there are nine dead from the collision, and officials say there are 67 people injured. The Fire Department Chief said that up to six of those people sustained life-threatening injuries, another 14 have less threatening injuries and more than 50 people have what officials call 'walking injuries.'"

WTOP confirms nine dead.

The New York Times has President Obama's statement on the crash:

“Michelle and I were saddened by the terrible accident in Northeast Washington, D.C., today. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends affected by this tragedy. I want to thank the brave first responders who arrived immediately to save lives. My staff has been in touch with Mayor Fenty’s office and will continue to monitor the situation.”

As of midnight, both the Times and the Washington Post have yet to report on the increased fatalities.

WJLA now confirms that nine passengers have died. Its source: Metro.

"The official death toll rose to nine from six about 11:30 p.m., Metro confirmed.

Crews will remain on the scene overnight, using cutting tools and the jaws of life to disentangle and separate the twisted cars which were ripped open and smashed together by the force of the collision."

Just after midnight, City Desk contacted D.C. Fire Department Deputy Chief Kenneth Crosswhite who says he called the command post regarding the death toll. He says the death toll is still listed at six. "They are still at six," Crosswhite says. "I don't know where they are coming up with that number."

Are they still going through the crash? Crosswhite says rescue workers are still going through the crash site. "They are still going through the process just verifying and checking out the train, making sure their are no patients now. I don't know where they're at. I was on the track, looked at the crash site."

Crosswhite was at the scene earlier, he says one of the big problems was the huge hill that lead to the tracks: "Gaining access to the injured to the scene there, the topography of the land is not the best. They had to cut the fence away, and use a ladder to make steps....They searched the area around to make sure nobody wandered along the track bed. They checked the area out."

That area included the nearby woods. Crosswhite says he ended up being tasked to drive the ambulance to transport two of the injured to a waiting helicopter.

"I had to drive the ambulance carrying the two [most severely injured] to the helicopter, to the land site at New Hampshire and Peabody." There was nobody at that moment available to drive the ambulance, he explains.

"When was the last time I drove an ambulance? Wow. Wow. Probably 10-15 years ago," Crosswhite. "I can drive them. I can even drive a ladder truck and a fire engine. They were very severely injured. The original landing site was on the bridge."

Much has been made of the District's plan to step up enforcement of parking restrictions all around town. The push will affect nightclubbers who try to press their luck in all of those spaces just shy of intersections, not to mention street-sweeping violators: The machines that roar down the alternating sides of certain D.C. streets will be equipped with cameras to nail all scofflaw automobiles in their way.

On Saturday, I observed the new municipal attitude in force. I spied a late-model Infiniti parked pretty unobtrusively on 15th Street NW, just shy of O Street. The car was squarely out of the residential parking perimeter but was well short of the intersection and posed a limited hazard---it was a car, and not an SUV, so there weren't any issues with blocked visibility. But there was the purple rectangle of dread on the windshield. It had been issued at 11:30 pm on Friday, evidence that the no-tolerance policies of a decade ago making a comeback.

OK, so what's news? Well, the WaPo ombo, Andy Alexander, declared himself in favor of the Post's having gone with a Web-only treatment for Paul Duggan's two-part narrative on the killing of 32-year-old Robert Wone, the most fascinating murder the city has perhaps ever seen. Alexander thought that the paper's editors made a good choice here, which puts him at odds with me!

Federer!

Those of us who've been following the news at least cursorily over the past year know that off all the U.S. automakers, Ford has been dealing with the downturn best. But that doesn't mean that if you're writing an article about the company's performance, you have to borrow from their own advertising copy. Here's Katherine Timpf of the Washington Times:

Amid bankruptcies and forecasts of Detroit doom, one of the Big Three is hanging tough. Ford tough.

The New York Times Magazine asks: Can Shakira make early childhood education the No. 1 priority in Latin America? And I state: I would have to be unemployed, stranded somewhere, with no cell phone, no Internet, no one to talk to, no billboards or nature to observe, to even consider reading such a story.

Oh, the drama! Read on to see whether the writer of the Post's story on regional cabin accommodations manages to strike up a fire on her very last match!

Today, the Nats lost more than just a game (the team got blanked 7-0 vs. the Mets), the Nats also lost use of its pyrotechnics. D.C. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin put at least a temporary end to the stadium's fireworks displays. Rubin attended today's game, and after a fireworks display for the National Anthem ordered them to be stopped. Why?

Fireworks debris had fallen on the fire chief. According to a source familiar with the dustup, the chief then got super testy---at one point, invoking his fancy fire chief title.

Fire Department spokesperson Alan Etter confirmed the basic account via e-mail.

"[Rubin] said debris did fall on him - he was not hurt," Etter wrote. "He did have a safety concern, that's why the decision was made - so the process can be examined and adjusted, if necessary."

The firework company had been launching its pyrotechnics since the Nats called RFK home. The company's work had been vetted repeatedly. We're awaiting comment from the firework company. There's much more to this story.

Update 7:35 p.m.: According to a source, Rubin was hit with paper debris.

According to a fire department document obtained by City Desk, the fireworks company had a permit for its work at the Nats stadium. There are also clear lines of responsibility regarding fireworks safety. It appears that Chief Rubin overruled one of his own firemen when he shutdown the fireworks.

The document states that department "provides site safety for the pyrotechnics shot at the Nationals Ballpark on game days. The shoot is from the rooftop.... The shoot consists of multiple shots (National Anthem, team-on-field, and any home run/victory)."

The document goes on to state:

"It is the responsibility of the [fire department] inspector to communicate with the operator any observed risks or deficiencies and take the necessary actions to prevent injuries or damage. It is also the responsibility of the inspector communicate with the Nationals Command any observed risks or events that could lead to injury or damage."

Rubin would have had to overrule his own on-scene fire inspector to halt the fireworks displays.

"I know there's something going on. The fire inspector, it wasn't his call. The actual fire inspector on duty. I know it wasn't his call. It was 100 percent Chief Rubin's call and he was just there for the game. He wasn't there for official business," says a source familiar with today's events. The source says the fireworks were completely safe; there had been no complaints until today.

Fluttering-post-launch-paper debris, the source contended, was normal.

Rubin was not exactly diplomatic when he argued for the fireworks to be shutdown. According to the source, Rubin at one point told authorities: "Do you know who I am?"

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

This week I chronicled D.C. Fire Department arson investigator Greg Bowyer. Bowyer, along with his partner Gerald Pennington, went from working arson cases to checking fire hydrants. They allege their demotion wasn't for any performance reason. No. They got transferred because of their whistleblowing activities.

For more than two years, Bowyer and Pennington have waged a campaign to right a fire department that they allege has routinely bungled major fire cases like the Eastern Market fire and the Mount Pleasant fire, and put in place untrained and unqualified fire investigators. For their efforts, they got placed on hydrant duty.

I just posted a timeline of their activities. And it definitely appears that when they've talked to the press whether it's WJLA or Courtland Milloy, the departmental hammer has come down. For my cover, Fire Chief Dennis Rubin and Attorney General Peter Nickles refused to comment about the whistleblowers' claims.

But I wonder what will happen to them now? Is there a position in the fire department lower than hydrant checker? I hope my story didn't mess them up.

First CFSA lost its spokesperson powers to the Mayor's Office. Now, it's the Fire Department's turn to refer all calls to Fenty spokesperson Mafara Hobson. At this point, I feel sorry for Hobson. Her job is busy enough with the on-going budget debates, the travel issues, etc. Now, she gets to field inquiries about the D.C. Fire Department activities.

Today, I e-mailed Fire Chief Dennis Rubin seeking comment for a story I am working on concerning whistleblower/Fire Investigator Greg Bowyer. I then followed up with a phone call to Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite to ask for Rubin's phone number.

By then, Rubin had already complained about my e-mail to Crosswhite. And my e-mail had already been forwarded to Hobson. I asked: why had Hobson become the Fire Department's vetting machine.

“I’m waiting to hear back from the mayor’s office," Crosswhite told me of my interview-with-Rubin request. "All communications go to the mayor’s office prior to us making comments.”

Update 2:31 p.m.: Fire Department is now on Facebook and Twitter.