WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington's fire chief says all the city's firefighters will be trained on how to respond to emergencies on the subway system.
Interim Chief Eugene Jones said Wednesday at a D.C. Council hearing that the fire department has beefed up its training in response to a fatal accident on the Metro subway last month. One woman died and more than 80 others were sickened when a train filled with smoke inside a tunnel near a downtown station.
In the past year, only 100 of the city's 1,700 firefighters had been trained on how to handle Metro incidents. That's a far lower training rate than in suburban jurisdictions. Jones says the frequency of training has increased and he's projecting that every firefighter will be trained within the next 2 ½ months.
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