A mix of snow and freezing rain turned Monday’s slushy commute into a nightmare when a power outage on the 7 line in Queens stranded hundreds of riders, officials said.
Straphangers were trapped inside the steamy cars of five separate trains for about three hours when ice buildup caused the electrified third rail to lose power just before 9 a.m. just north of Queensboro Plaza.
An up-close view of the crew de-icing a plane’s wing at LaGuardia.Katie BenedictThe stalled train caused a log jam that left four other trains stuck between stations.
Riders tweeted their frustrations while waiting to be freed.
A Metro-North trains travels north along the Hudson River on Monday.Reuters“We are stuck right before the queensboro station… #MTA does not know how to evacuate or have plan. Pls help,” pleaded one female passenger.
“I want the @MTA brought up on war crimes charges. #7train,” a rider named James Stewart-Meudt raged.
The riders were eventually evacuated around 11:30 a.m. after the MTA towed the trains to nearby stations, with some passengers forced to walk between trains to reach the platform.
As of early Monday afternoon, the 7 train was still out of service while the MTA worked to repair the problem.
The ordeal left thousands of other commuters who regularly rely on the 7 train scrambling into the pouring rain in search of cabs or buses — which were few and far between.
The MTA said every bus line in the city is experiencing delays, as are several subway and commuter train lines.
The region’s airports also ground to a halt Monday, with hundreds of cancellations and delays at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark.
Dozens of people were sleeping on the floor in LaGuardia’s terminals as they waited for updates.
The mixture of snow and rain turned the city into a slushy disaster.Getty Images“I have back problems and [United] kept us standing in line for 3 hours this morning,” fumed Carolyn Deforest, 59. “They won’t give us any information. I’m ready to kill!”
Deforest and her husband, Randy, were trying to get back to their native Toronto after returning from a cruise in Puerto Rico when their connecting flight was canceled.
“I’ve already lost a day of work, paid for another night in a hotel, and we’ll probably get stuck here another night,” he said.
Icing also stranded 32 riders on the JFK Air Train around noon before the Port Authority managed to evacuate the elevated train and get things moving again.
The weather is also being blamed for sporadic power outages in Brooklyn and Queens, as well as several manhole fires around the city.
“When the ice and snow and salt from the streets goes into the sewers and corrodes the electrical lines, it causes electrical breakdowns and transformer incidents, like smoking and fires,” one source said.
