Part Of Subway Likely To Stay Closed Until Tuesday After Fatal Accident

It was a terrible start to a terrible day for commuters and workers at the TTC.

And it’s now possible riders may experience a rerun on Tuesday morning, after a fatal accident shut down several key stations on the Yonge-University subway line early Monday.

It happened at 5am, just before the system was reopened for the morning rush.

An 11-man crew was cleaning asbestos from a tunnel between Eglinton and Lawrence station when something went horribly wrong.

At the end of their shift, the men were riding back to the Davisville yard in their work car when it appears there was some kind of collision between the vehicle and something on the side of the tunnel wall, causing major damage and resulting in the devastating mishap.

“At some point on that trip back a piece of equipment made contact with our tunnel wall,” outlines TTC chair Adam Giambrone. “That ripped out a piece of cable we think. There are a number of pieces … that destabilized the car.

“Once the car was destabilized it made further contact with the tunnel wall and a piece of equipment that was actually on the flatbed truck, one of the pieces used to allow the worker to get up close to the tunnel walls to scrape some of the asbestos away, actually dislodged, crashed into the car that was right behind it.

“That’s where the operator was located and that’s what caused the huge bulk of the damage.”

One of the workers was killed in the mishap, two more were seriously hurt and sent to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre for treatment.

The result: stations were closed from York Mills to Eglinton, and commuters were forced into emergency mode.

“Something went wrong, and this is part of the investigation that’s going on right now,” Giambrone admits. “Obviously this isn’t supposed to happen.”

The shutdown resulted in two rush hours without service, an unprecedented disruption for the Red Rocket.

It took hours for crews to reach the worker’s body. TTC officials held a huge tarp as a curtain so prying cameras couldn’t see the victim’s remains as they were removed from the tunnel and brought above ground around 2pm.

Many of the remaining members of the crew involved collapsed into tears when they discovered they’d lost a colleague and a friend, described by Giambrone as a longtime employee who’d earned many commendations with the transit system.

His name hasn’t been released and grief counsellors were brought in to console the survivors.

Police, TTC, fire officials and the provincial Ministry of Labour were all on scene investigating the mishap.

They don’t believe the tunnel itself was damaged, but because of the fatality, the exposure of asbestos, and the overall repair that may be needed, the TTC admits it’ s possible the stations involved will remain off limits until at least Tuesday.

The subway carries over a million passengers a day and the effects on the already crowded rush hours in the city were instantaneous.

Hundreds of thousands were inconvenienced, forced onto shuttle buses that could only carry a fraction of the load.

For more on that aspect of this story,  click here.