Comments (0) Best disaster-porn tourist spot - 2006
Malbone Street wreck
Historic though it may be, when it comes down to it, ground zero doesn't offer tourists much to see other than an ugly hole in the ground. Adventurous disaster junkies can get a more satisfying fix at the site of Brooklyn's Malbone Street wreck, the most deadly mass-transit accident in the nation's history. On November 1, 1918, in the midst of a strike by subway motormen after 29 of them had been fired for unionizing, the then private Brooklyn Rapid Transit company put dispatcher Edward Luciano behind the controls of a Brighton-bound elevated train. With almost no experience and working a double shift, Luciano sped down what's now the Franklin Avenue Shuttle line at breakneck speed; his train was estimated to be going as fast as 70 mph when it hit the curve entering the tunnel under Malbone Street in Crown Heights. Two of the wooden cars flew off the tracks, hit the tunnel walls, and "crumbled like fruit cases," according to one contemporary account, in a crash that was heard a mile away. At least 93 people died, and many more were horribly maimed. In the aftermath, the BRT declared bankruptcy and emerged as the BMT, Malbone Street was renamed Empire Boulevard, and subway systems learned to shut down during a strike instead of putting scabs behind the wheel.
