Poor Huberman

Ron is having a bad couple of days with his trains:

• A man threatening to jump from a CTA viaduct onto Archer Avenue on Saturday night caused a shutdown on the Red Line, and the delay aboard two sweltering trains eventually sent 16 people to four area hospitals, fire officials said.
  
  Four of the ill passengers, including a pregnant woman, were taken to hospitals in serious condition, but neither fire nor CTA officials knew their conditions on Sunday, or whether they had been released.

A long time ago, CTA evacuation procedures were explained to us. Obviously, the third rail is dangerous place to be. When the people running the system are ordered to shut down a section, they usually take down a few miles of track just to be sure. But one would think that perhaps a CTA supervisor with some basic knowledge of the rail system might be able to contact the main switching stations and power up unaffected portions of the electrified rail and get the trains full of stranded passengers back to the nearest station at the very least so as to avoid sending dozens of people to the hospital suffering from the heat or, even worse, having someone fall off the elevated sections. And if that isn't feasible, some form of non electrical power to get the trains to a platform? Gasoline engines? Natural gas so as not to offend the mayor? Batteries?

A truck bomb goes off under the El in the Loop and the CTA, CFD and CPD can't get people off the trains promptly and safely? Talk about compounding a tragedy.