Farragut North Ceiling Collapse

I found the gates down at 9pm. The station manager inside the cage inside was the protypical highly communicative WMATA employee;
"The station is closed, go for Dupont or Farragot West..."

But with three circus trucks on site with dishes up; I knew this was not a power failure. The story a news crew told me was a street construction crew had punched through the ceiling and dropped a slab of concrete onto the platform. We'll see what the truth is.

Apparently the station has reopened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... d=newswell

Authorities reopened Farragut North Metro station Thursday morning after closing it Wednesday when concrete fell through a ceiling tile in the roof of the underground tunnel.

One of the concrete chunks--apparently dislodged as a result of construction work on Connecticut Avenue NW, above the station--was as big as a human head, said Pete Piringer, a D.C. fire department spokesman. No injuries were reported.

"farecard"
The story a news crew told me was a street construction crew had punched through the ceiling and dropped a slab of concrete onto the platform. We'll see what the truth is.

To be precise, the construction crew punched through the roof of the dome relief vet shaft plenum above the station arch. There are a pair of openings in the coffers above the acoustical panels that connect to that vet shaft plenum. The roof of the station is roughly 15' below the surface, the roof of the vet shaft plenum is roughly 10' below the surface.

Pictures of the dome relief vet shaft opening at Dr. Gridlock blog post:
Farragut North Station closed

Google street view of the surface opening of the dome relief vet shaft.

The Farragut North station is the only station in the system that has it's dome relief vet shaft opening in the middle of the street. I will also note that the dome relief vet shaft openings at Farragut North are not functional as they were sealed shut back in the 1980s. My best guess as to why they were sealed shut was to prevent rain water from pouring in to the station and or to prevent motor vehicle exhaust fumes from being sucked into the station.