Glad you're safe, Fred.
2009/1/22 Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
> Sounds like any New Year's Eve in DC to me. I've always wondered how the
> folks near the edge
> of the subway platforms avoided being shoved under incoming trains. Done
> that once. Don't need
> to do it twice.
>
> Hal
>
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> Halvard Johnson
> ================
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> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
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> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Ehalvard/vidalocabooks.html>
>
>
>
> On Jan 21, 2009, at 11:20 AM, deborah russell wrote:
>
> You must have walked/circled several miles in that weather. At least at
>> L'Enfant plaza, you could have
>> used the hotel as a decent rest stop. It sounds like a bad dream, trip or
>> a Chevy Chase film. > Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:53:33 -0500> From:
>> [log in to unmask]> Subject: My experience of the Inauguration> To:
>> [log in to unmask]> > My wife produces television documentaries;
>> the one she's currently working on is about coal and the horrors of
>> mountaintop-removal mining. Her co-producer and another friend of ours came
>> down from Ohio for the Inauguration. Co-producer had four tickets to the
>> Yellow seating zone, very near the Capitol steps. After the expected
>> sardine-like Metro ride we arrived on the Mall by 9:30 and asked directions
>> of various official personnel; at least, they wore badges or little
>> laminated cards. They either admitted they didn't know how to get to the
>> Yellow entrance, or confidently gave us wrong directions. The result was
>> that we had to retrace our steps twice, three long blocks in two different
>> directions. On the Jumbotron screens, the dignitaries were beginning to
>> descend from the Capitol. We were still very far from our seats and there
>> was no way to get to them. I still have no idea where the entrance was; all
>> we saw were fences and equally confused, wandering people. Looking for a
>> johnI entered the National Museum of the American Indian and found another
>> big screen and a crowd in the rotunda watching it. We joined them and stood,
>> wedged among people, through Obama's speech. (Didn't hear the poem.)
>> Lighting and projection were bad, images hardly more than outlines in gray.
>> By now we hadn't sat for four hours. In the crowd were a number of other
>> people who had not been able to reach their assigned seats; they were
>> holding up their invitations for others to film with their cell-phone
>> cameras. Leaving the Museum we walked five long blocks west, towards home,
>> along Independence. At 12th the street was blocked: dangerously dense crowd,
>> moving in several directions, going nowhere. There seemed to be cops ahead -
>> we saw gesturing, gloved hands - but none of them had bullhorns and no one
>> had any idea what we were supposed to do. We were in the midst of it, being
>> nearly crushed but managing to stay together. Then we and several thousand
>> other people wandered around the area for the next hour and a half. Much of
>> it is under construction, and we climbed Jersey barriers and walked over
>> frozen mud, only to encounter more fences and blockages, NO directing signs,
>> NO officials of any sort. Finally we found our way to the Metro entrance at
>> L'Enfant plaza. Apparently someone had had the bright idea of closing most
>> of the Metro stations so that the crowd would concentrate at only a few
>> points (and the people on platforms would not be frustrated by a series of
>> packed trains). We stood in a crowd of several thousand people for another 1
>> 1/2 hours. This again was one of those crowds you read about, which trample
>> people to death, and in which you can't breathe. One woman fainted; one
>> asthmatic man had an attack. People shouted and apparently Metro medics
>> somehow got to them eventually. During this time we moved down a flight of
>> stairs and into the approaches to the building - about 150 feet. Temperature
>> was 19 degrees F. "Good thing it ain't July," said someone, and there was
>> general agreement. My wife is short and I tried to create a zone around her
>> with my arms, pushing back against people crushing her. Our friends were
>> ahead of us and eventually I could no longer see them. At 3:30 my wife
>> couldn't take any more; neither could I. We somehow pushed our way out; I
>> told people she wasn't well. The crowd behaved throughout with civility and
>> good humor. The only crowd control we saw was one Metro official, again
>> without a bullhorn, who seemed amused at everyone's situation - anger was
>> directed at him. We returned to the intersection that had been blocked by a
>> crowd three hours before. Now it was open, and we walked west - past many
>> soldiers and police who appeared to be guarding the WWII Memorial and
>> Washington Monument; they would have been much better assigned to crowd
>> control and guidance. We walked along the Reflecting Pool. Jumbotrons there
>> were still on and images of Obama's limo beamed down on no one. We walked
>> all the way back to Foggy Bottom, where we had entered the Metro, wondering
>> whether our friends (one of whom is not well) would get there before us,
>> whether they even on the subway. We couldn't reach them, of course, by cell
>> phone. Eventually my wife reached them from a hotel bar near the Foggy
>> Bottom Metro stop; they had waited in that line for another hour and a half,
>> before entering the train, and had just arrived.> > People easily could have
>> been trampled in the crowds we were trapped in; we saw terrifed children and
>> older people having great difficulty bearing up. > I estimate that easily
>> 100,000 people were subject to this execrable planning. But from what I've
>> heard, read, and seen so far today, it is being treated as a non-story.
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
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