# One Dead, Dozens Injured in Washington (DC) Metro Smoke Incident



## Guest (Jan 12, 2015)

From CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/12/politics/smoke-lenfant-plaza/index.html



> One passenger has died after smoke filled the L'Enfant Plaza metro station in downtown Washington on Monday, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokeswoman told CNN.
> 
> The station was temporarily closed after filling with smoke, while a disabled train was evacuated. D.C. Fire and EMS tweeted that one person was critically injured and six others were hurt in the incident after a train filled with smoke and its passengers were evacuated.
> 
> ...


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## PRR 60 (Jan 12, 2015)

One passenger has died, and dozens more have been transported to hospitals (two critical) after an incident filled a Virginia Yellow Line train with smoke. This from the Washington Post:



> Metro General Manager Richard Sarles said one of the passengers injured in the tunnel incident has died. The woman has not been identified pending notification of next of kin, he said.
> 
> In addition, Sarles said two people were in critical condition at George Washington Hospital; 40 were transported by bus to Howard University Hospital, and another 20 to 25 people were taken to Washington Hospital Center. Sarles said that since the incident involved a fatality, the Metropolitan Police Department would now be involved in the investigation.


Since there is a fatality and multiple injuries, I suspect the NTSB will take over this investigation.

Ironically, General Manager Richard Sarles was brought in to WMATA four years ago to repair the safety culture. By all accounts, he has made a huge difference there. He is retiring on Friday.


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## guest (Jan 12, 2015)

Where there is smoke there is fire?


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## Ryan (Jan 12, 2015)

Not necessarily.


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## OlympianHiawatha (Jan 12, 2015)

guest said:


> Where there is smoke there is fire?


Or Terror


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## Ryan (Jan 12, 2015)




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## jis (Jan 13, 2015)

OlympianHiawatha said:


> guest said:
> 
> 
> > Where there is smoke there is fire?
> ...


Or just maybe overheated transformer


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## NW cannonball (Jan 13, 2015)

jis said:


> OlympianHiawatha said:
> 
> 
> > guest said:
> ...


Indeed. or whatever.

NTSB is on the case. http://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx


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## jis (Jan 13, 2015)

They are now saying it was an electric arc in a power cable or something like that.


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## MrFSS (Jan 13, 2015)

jis said:


> They are now saying it was an electric arc in a power cable or something like that.


I heard water on the third rail.


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## CHamilton (Jan 13, 2015)

> And authorities now believe they know why the train, which had just left the L’Enfant Plaza station, came to a halt about 800 feet into the tunnel. The National Transportation Safety Board said “an electrical arcing event” occurred about 1,100 feet in front of the train. The event filled the tunnel with smoke, the NTSB said.
> 
> The agency said the arcing involved cables that power the third rail. Arcing is often connected with short circuits and may generate smoke. There did not appear to have been a fire.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/1-dead-dozens-hurt-on-metro-car-filled-with-smoke/2015/01/12/e832c0f0-9aa8-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html


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## jis (Jan 13, 2015)

The problem seemed to be the lack of existence or at least execution of a coherent evacuation plan in a timely manner.

There may have been exigencies that made quicker evacuation impossible. Such will become clear from the NTSB investigation. In any case whatever it was will need to be fixed so that much more rapid evacuation is possible.


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## Bob Dylan (Jan 13, 2015)

jis said:


> The problem seemed to be the lack of existence or at least execution of a coherent evacuation plan in a timely manner.


That sure sounds like Washington's Metro Management for sure!!

Be interesting to see the NTSB's final report on what kind of toxic smoke ( if it was) caused the death and serious injuries! I used to catch the Metro here all the time, wonder if all the underground stations ( especially Metro Center, the Big One) have this problem??


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## Anderson (Jan 13, 2015)

I agree. From what I've read...quite frankly, I'm stunned that the procedure was _not_ "Kill power to the third rail both ways on the affected track sections and direct passengers to evacuate towards the nearest station away from the smoke."


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## neroden (Jan 13, 2015)

Relevant for the history of Amtrak, the chair of WMATA's board right now -- who is painting an overly rosy picture of the situation -- is Tom Downs, former President of Amtrak who I have really savaged in the past. (I think he was probably the worst Amtrak President ever, and I don't know why he doesn't get more flak on passenger rail fan boards. He was certainly far worse for Amtrak than Warrington.)

By all accounts GM Sarles has improved the safety culture at WMATA, but there seems to have been no safety culture at all to start with, so there's still a lot of change necessary.

I know a board chairman doesn't micromanage, but you'd think he'd notice that there was no evacuation procedure!! The DC Metro tunnels are actually pretty easy to evacuate through, since they have bench walkways on the sides: they're not like the older NYC or Boston subway tunnels which have zero clearance.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jan 13, 2015)

OlympianHiawatha said:


> guest said:
> 
> 
> > Where there is smoke there is fire?
> ...


Does your knee hurt when it jerks like that?


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## Anderson (Jan 14, 2015)

neroden said:


> Relevant for the history of Amtrak, the chair of WMATA's board right now -- who is painting an overly rosy picture of the situation -- is Tom Downs, former President of Amtrak who I have really savaged in the past. (I think he was probably the worst Amtrak President ever, and I don't know why he doesn't get more flak on passenger rail fan boards. He was certainly far worse for Amtrak than Warrington.)
> 
> By all accounts GM Sarles has improved the safety culture at WMATA, but there seems to have been no safety culture at all to start with, so there's still a lot of change necessary.
> 
> I know a board chairman doesn't micromanage, but you'd think he'd notice that there was no evacuation procedure!! The DC Metro tunnels are actually pretty easy to evacuate through, since they have bench walkways on the sides: they're not like the older NYC or Boston subway tunnels which have zero clearance.


To answer your question on Downs v Warrington, I think the answer is that while Downs made a bunch of errors that were somewhat obscured (maintenance cuts, for example) or that were forced (route cuts), Warrington's errors were highly visible and *ahem* spectacular. They also helped lead directly to a raft of current restrictions (the no new LD routes thing was in no small part due to the mess of routes that Warrington was floating out there that weren't likely to do well...IIRC he was going to manage an impressive amount of east-west connectivity (something like 7-8 daily trains between the NEC and Chicago) but they were going to be mixed trains with a few passenger cars thrown on for legal purposes (if I'm not mistaken, all but the Cap would have been single-level...and given that they were having to toss the Heritage cars, it isn't clear how Amtrak would have been able to run sleepers on even a majority of those trains for too long).

To put it another way, Downs made a bunch of errors but Warrington reminds me of Corridor Capital all too much.


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## PRR 60 (Jan 14, 2015)

Anderson said:


> I agree. From what I've read...quite frankly, I'm stunned that the procedure was _not_ "Kill power to the third rail both ways on the affected track sections and direct passengers to evacuate towards the nearest station away from the smoke."


Evacuating a train carrying several hundred passenger of varying physical capabilities into a smoke-filled tunnel prior to the arrival of help should be the last resort. The first option would be to move the train and passengers out of harms way to safety - in this case back to L'Enfant Plaza station. Since it is not clear what caused the smoke and how that affected the ability to provide traction power to move the train, it's not possible to know if that was or was not a viable option. Until all the varying and conflicting stories are sorted out by the NTSB, all of our opinions of what should have been done are just speculation.


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## neroden (Jan 14, 2015)

(1) Kill the power

(2) Turn on the fans

(3) Evacuate the passengers

Having passengers stay put in a smoke-filled train for 45 minutes is obviously wrong. Sorry to say this, but it's just obviously wrong. Getting people out of the smoke ASAP has to be the priority. Most deaths in fires are due to smoke inhalation.

It was clear within 5 minutes that the train wasn't moving back to the station.


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## neroden (Jan 14, 2015)

Anderson said:


> To put it another way, Downs made a bunch of errors but Warrington reminds me of Corridor Capital all too much.


Heh. I see what you mean. But of course Warrington was inheriting the unmitigated disaster bequeathed by Downs. Perhaps Warrington's undue optimism and financial engineering were what was needed to get Amtrak back on track. It's interesting to note that Warrington was working directly under Downs, and promoted into Downs's job, at both NJT and Amtrak.

At Amtrak, Downs managed to generate falling ridership, falling revenue, rising costs, and counterproductive cuts to service... in a period which was actually quite good for every other form of passenger rail in the US. He's also the one who invented the line "glide path to profitability".

Downs's record is, unfortunately, bad on one project after another after another; he came to Amtrak after mismanaging the DC Union Station rehab project. I haven't looked into his record running DDOT (DC), TBTA, or NJDOT, but if I recall correctly things went poorly at all three of them while he was there. Downs is now at Veolia's North American transportation division, which of course *also* has a terrible reputation. The only thing which could excuse Downs's record is if he deliberately takes jobs in organizations which he knows to be complete disasters, but that doesn't really explain his record at Amtrak or NJDOT or the DC Union Station project.

I think Downs is a well-meaning guy, and I'd love to have him as part of an advocacy group, but he doesn't seem to be cut out to manage or direct a major operation. Why does he keep getting hired?


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## PRR 60 (Jan 14, 2015)

neroden said:


> (1) Kill the power
> 
> (2) Turn on the fans
> 
> ...


Yes, having people stay on the train for 45 minutes (or whatever the time actually was) was wrong. I didn't say it wasn't wrong. I simply said that evacuating a train, unsupervised, into a dark and smoke-filled tunnel should not be the first option (as had been suggested). It should be the last option. Evacuating a trainload of passengers unsupervised is dangerous (people will panic), and the level of danger in the tunnel was not known (smoke, water, you name it). Even knowing which direction was the safe direction may not have been known.

Trying to move the train should be the first option. Getting help to the train should be the second option. Telling the passengers to get themselves off the train as best they can and head in some direction that is maybe safe, or maybe not, should be the last option. That last option should occur quicker than 45 minutes, but it still should be the last option. Yes, sitting here two days later, knowing some (but far from all) the facts, some things may now be "obvious." At that moment, for the operator of the train and the dispatchers in the control center, there was nothing obvious.


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## jis (Jan 14, 2015)

Basically, for all underground systems there should be a well planned drill documented, in place and practiced, just like there is for airlines and for outfits like Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel. I don't know what the state of affairs is at any of the underground systems in the US. I guess we will learn from the NTSB when they are done investigating.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/another-disaster-for-dcs-metro-system/2015/01/13/60c539a6-9b2d-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?hpid=z7

http://blogs.rollcall.com/hill-blotter/lenfant-metro-incident-raises-questions-about-d-c-emergency-response/?dcz=


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## Blackwolf (Jan 14, 2015)

I am certain that procedures and policy for all nature of emergency situations taking place in one of the three environmental areas the Metro operates in (Elevated Trackway, At-Grade, Below-Grade Subway) exists in large volumes. They must have them, because the Federal Government requires them to. The question should instead be, why were they not executed in the manner prescribed? I think I can answer this to a small degree, and would be curious to see if any NTSB report says the same:

In our Post-9/11 Every-Emergency-Is-A-Terrorist-Act world, especially so in the Capitol, when the call came in that there was a problem with smoke and fire involving a train I'll bet the very first thing that occurred was a reaction toward a security mindset. Procedure to that effect was likely instituted, and all manner of flip-charts in dispatch and HQ as well as terrorist attack mitigation training by field personnel went into effect. Namely, secure the scene, detain any suspects, deny entry and wait for the Army to arrive.

Meanwhile, the much longer-standing policies and procedures regarding life safety and evacuation of the public spaces (stations, effected train(s)) in an emergency are commonly in conflict with the newer anti-terrorism guidelines. For the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), which is the grandaddy of WMATA, tunnel fire procedures involving an occupied revenue train underground between stations are well-known and used to be intensively studied. The January 1979 _Transbay Tube_ fire put them to the test, and in a situation that turned out to be much more challenging than what sounds like this is, all passengers successfully escaped. Unfortunately responding firefighters suffered casualties, including the death of one due to his breathing air being exhausted and disorientation setting in with a smoke-filled 0% visibility situation. As a result, improvements were made and there are constant drills every month with surrounding emergency agencies dealing with all manner of these emergency types.

If the issue was with the 3rd rail, then traction power would/should have been cut early on. However, all of those train cars, if they are like the BART fleet, have battery-powered emergency propulsion and should have been able to move back to the previous station in "limp mode." And if there was an issue with one of the cars not having propulsion, moving passengers into cars that still have propulsion capability and then cutting the damaged car from the consist is the next action to take. The very last action anyone should take is the evacuation of passengers into the tunnel. Though, as I also believe will be reported, a number of passengers "self-evacuated" at the first sign of smoke by opening emergency exit doors/windows without instruction from the train crew to do so. Such is human nature.


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## Bob Dylan (Jan 14, 2015)

You know the answer Cliff, the guy is known and "liked" by the powers that be

in the Transportation/ Government marriage!

Same reason so many incompetents keep getting appointed to jobs in government and hack politicians keep getting re- elected!


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## Paulus (Jan 14, 2015)

neroden said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > To put it another way, Downs made a bunch of errors but Warrington reminds me of Corridor Capital all too much.
> ...


Keep in mind that Downs inherited an incredible backlog of deferred maintenance from Claytor (who apparently decided to run a brand new fleet into the ground).


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## Anderson (Jan 15, 2015)

Paulus said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > Anderson said:
> ...


It's not like Claytor inherited a great situation, either. When he came in, Amtrak's CR was under 50% system-wide (we're hovering over 90% right now) and the operating subsidy demand was close to a _billion _dollars in today's terms. Some of this may have been bad accounting, sure, but the point still stands that Claytor didn't have a lot of room to move.

From what I can tell, Claytor deferred that maintenance because the alternative was even deeper system cuts than we saw under Carter and a very real risk of having the system collapse as politicians lost "their" trains. He made a bunch of moves that were not ideal, but the conditions he was working under also were not ideal.

Honestly, the last time Amtrak had a solid political environment for a long time was probably in the 1970s (which saw Amtrak get the Amfleet I, Amfleet II, and Superliner I orders placed). Since then, equipment supplies in particular and funding in general have been scattershot at best and so you had a string of presidents do everything they could to keep things running in the hopes of getting to a major pot of funding...culminating in the Downs-Warrington meltdown. Of course if you want to talk about irony, considering the smash hit that the Acelas were basically from when they started running...the calculations in the 90s would have been right if Amtrak had been able to simply buy off-the-shelf equipment at the time (instead of the mess of a project that was creating the Acela).

Edit: Back to the topic at hand...

There should probably be a timeframe for going to a tunnel evacuation in a situation like this (i.e. smoke in the tunnel), and I can't see it being "wait an hour". It isn't the fact that they didn't move to evacuate that way...it's that this carried on for most of an hour without resorting to that. I'll agree that there are other things that are "better" options, but if you can't do those in a timely manner and you've got something like the smoke situation going on there really does need to be a point that you pull the plug on those options and start getting people out of there.


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## jis (Jan 15, 2015)

Just imagine what would happen if people were allowed to bumble around in aircraft evacuation. For example, there would have been massive casualties in the Asiana hard landing at SFO. Presence of toxic (or even Oxygen depleted) smoke is what does the killing even in fire situations, and the first thing to do is to get the people out of there as fast as possible.

I am almost certain that this event will cause some serious rethink of this matter. There are similar issues in the New York mainline tunnels. For example, the NJT and LIRR MLV's lower level emergency windows are absolutely useless for evacuation in the under river tunnels, since they are below the level of the catwalk and basically open facing concrete a few inches away. Which means that the entire lower level and some of the upper level will have to be evacuated up/down the stairs and then through the narrow doors. Is there an evacuation procedure in place? I am sure there is copious documentation. Do the actual folks on the ground practice such regularly and have it built into them as second nature? Maybe, maybe not. Does anyone know how long it will take to evacuate a 10 car MLV train? Probably not. Has any simulation or real test been done? Maybe, but none that I am aware of, since such a test would have most likely been reported on.


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## Ryan (Jan 15, 2015)

I'm curious as to what the capacity of the tunnel ventilation system is. Obviously in a full on fire situation you don't want to move massive volumes of air, but in this situation, it would have been nice to crank up the vents and suck all of the smoke away from the tunnels and eject it above ground where it can dissipate.


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## afigg (Jan 15, 2015)

Lastest Washington Post story which provides more details on the incident and the delay in the DC Fire Department going down the tunnel to begin to extract the passengers: Timeline confirms Metro riders’ accounts of wait for rescue on dark, smoke-filled train. Took way too long to get the passengers off of the train.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jan 15, 2015)

jis said:


> Just imagine what would happen if people were allowed to bumble around in aircraft evacuation. For example, there would have been massive casualties in the Asiana hard landing at SFO.


Just imagine if a bumbling recovery driver killed a young girl by driving blindly into a mountain of foam retardant. There would be hell to pay nothing to say. Well, besides a bureaucratic reversal of the coroner's finding. The OZ 214 incident seems to have as much to say about the precision of SFO's emergency response as it does about Asiana. Much of what makes flying safe today is based on actual rules and penalties written in the blood of those who perished in the past. I see no reason to assume train safety would be any different. Hopefully this event will receive enough continuing press to result in actionable changes beyond the publishing of yet another volume of unenforced best practices paperwork.


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## beautifulplanet (Jan 15, 2015)

DC Metro timeline confirms long wait times for rescue from smoke-filled cars

January 15, 2015

By Alan Yuhas

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/15/dc-metro-timeline-delay-response-time-smoke-train

Some details not included in the Washington Post story:



> At 4.25pm, an hour after smoke was first reported, medics transported the woman who later died to hospital, after at least 20 minutes of CPR on the scene.





> NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson told the Guardian it could take a year for the agency to complete its investigation of the incident and the “survival factors” of the city’s response.


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## Anderson (Jan 16, 2015)

Devil's Advocate said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Just imagine what would happen if people were allowed to bumble around in aircraft evacuation. For example, there would have been massive casualties in the Asiana hard landing at SFO.
> ...


Yeah, but you'd think that the issues would have been dealt with in the past on this front. It seems like a generalized FUBAR, at least as far as I can tell...and I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for WMATA on this one. That's going to go double if they flubbed their own procedures (which does seem plausible).


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2015)

DC Metro learn from past mistakes? Like this incident in 2013?



> WASHINGTON – Two weeks after trains were stranded in a tunnel on the Green Line near Anacostia, Metro admits mistakes were made.
> 
> “It’s very troubling when you don’t follow all the protocols that could have alleviated the situation,” says Metro General Manager Richard Sarles.
> 
> ...


From this article: http://wtop.com/news/2013/02/metro-admits-mistakes-on-the-green-line-incident/


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## afigg (Jan 16, 2015)

Preliminary NTSB report on the incident: ​Preliminary Report: WMATA Smoke and Electrical Arcing Accident in Washington, DC. Has photos and basic info on what is known.

I think the major scrutiny is going to be on the response of and questionable coordination of the Metro PD and the DC Fire Department.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2015)

Why does the movie Cool Hand Luke come to mind?


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## Anderson (Jan 18, 2015)

Honestly, it sounds like Metro does not do a good job of taking into account the fact that after a given amount of time, passengers are going to decide to self-evacuate no matter what the employees ask of them. Communication in general doesn't seem to be a strong suit, either.


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## Ryan (Jan 18, 2015)

Two of many things that WMATA doesn't seem to be very good at these days.


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## Bob Dylan (Jan 18, 2015)

WMATA is about as well administrated as the Washington City Government or the Public School System! In other words, poorly!


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## Ryan (Feb 12, 2015)

Oops.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/ntsb-metro-fans-pushed-smoke-toward-passengers-on-train/2015/02/11/42db65d8-b215-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html



> In its most detailed revelations yet about the Jan. 12 incident, the National Transportation Safety Board outlined a sequence of missteps in which Metro controllers, 11 miles from the scene, activated two sets of giant fans at cross-purposes with devastating consequences.
> 
> The two sets of fans, on opposite ends of the train, were both pulling the smoke instead of one set pushing while the other pulled, the NTSB said. As a result, the mass of fumes settled over the stationary train and stayed there.
> 
> ...


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## neroden (Feb 13, 2015)

WMATA has developed a reputation for a very poor "corporate culture", particularly in the matter of safety. It may be to the point where everyone needs to be replaced from top to bottom. :-(

Famously, there was a defect in the BART signalling system which made it non-failsafe. BART patched this, and informed WMATA, which is the only other agency which used essentially the same system. *Thirty years later*, WMATA had not fixed the problem and the nasty Red Line crash happened.


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## Ryan (Feb 13, 2015)

They were at that point when they hired Sarles, which is what he was supposed to be doing. Doesn't look like he's been successful.


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