RIDER NEARLY HIT BY CEILING PANEL
MBTA launches systemwide inspection
New surveillance video released by the MBTA shows a rider was nearly hit by a 25-pound ceiling tile that fell in Harvard station this week.
The water-logged aluminum panel fell about 10 feet, just as the person was walking by, causing them to momentarily freeze and look up before sidestepping the damage and walking away from the scene.
“We’re extremely fortunate that there wasn’t an injury as a result of this,” MBTA Interim General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville said at a Friday press conference. “It was very close.”
Gonneville said the MBTA is taking this incident, which occurred shortly before 4 p.m. Wednesday, “very seriously, as we do with anything that could potentially impact the safety of our riders and our employees.”
The MBTA is taking steps to remove all similar soundproofing panels, which were installed around 1980 in Harvard and other stations, he said, and is conducting a systemwide audit to prevent another ceiling collapse. The audit will take about two weeks.
Preliminary observations suggest this particular panel failed due to corrosion, which was likely caused by its wet condition that had been “increasing over a number of years,” he said.
As a result, what should have been a 5-pound panel was about 25 pounds at the time of its collapse, Gonneville said.
Ten panels out of the 400 to 500 located in Harvard station have been removed since Wednesday. The targeted panels do not affect the structural integrity of MBTA stations. Rather, their purpose is to be aesthetically pleasing and provide sound absorption, he said.
Gonneville said the MBTA will continue to investigate this incident and make its findings available to the public. He noted that a 2021 inspection of the Harvard station found no defects with these types of soundproofing panels.
But he added that this week’s incident underscores the importance of keeping up with repairs and maintenance across the MBTA system, which was identified as a major defect in last year’s federal investigation.
“Wednesday’s panel failure is the most recent example of the work we have ahead of us to bring the system back into a state of good repair and provide our riders with the service that they deserve,” Gonneville said.