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Entire DC Metro Rail System to Shut Down for 29 Hours in Unprecedented Emergency Investigation
Passengers board a subway train at the L'Enfant Metro Station, which is part of the public mass transit network for Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. The transit network in the nation's capital, remains hobbled after an electrical malfunction that filled a L'Enfant Metro subway station with smoke, killing one woman and sending dozens of people to hospitals. The NTSB is investigating the incident, which happened at the beginning of the Monday afternoon rush hour. It led to the first fatality on Washington's Metro system since a 2009 crash that killed eight passengers and a train operator. NTSB investigator Michael Flanigon told reporters that an electrical "arcing" involving the high-voltage third rail led a train to stop in a tunnel and filled the tunnel with smoke. An arcing occurs when electricity from the third rail comes into contact with another substance that conducts electricity, such as water. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Entire DC Metro Rail System to Shut Down for 29 Hours in Unprecedented Emergency Investigation

Beginning at midnight Wednesday.

The entire Washington, D.C., Metro rail system will come to a screeching halt for more than a day beginning Wednesday morning for an unprecedented emergency investigation.

Passengers board a train at the L'Enfant Metro Station, which is part of the public mass transit network for Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The decision was made after an electrical cable caught fire Monday, causing delays on three of the system's six lines that run throughout the D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia region.

Metro officials said Tuesday that they will inspect up to 1,200 pieces of equipment beginning at 12 a.m. Wednesday. The system will reopen Thursday after 29 hours of no service, WRC-TV reported.

One Metro rider from Alexandria, Virginia, 61-year-old Carol Inman Glover, died in January 2015 after a train billowed with smoke at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Southwest D.C. Dozens of other passengers were injured in the same incident.

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