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A friend e-mailed me the CNN account of this incident, but I prefer "The New York Times" version, which I read first. Here is an excerpt from "The New York Times" article:
"October 31, 2003
The Worst Place to Drop a Cellphone? Here''s One
By MICHELLE O''DONNELL
It was a natural reaction to a simple problem: a cellphone falls into a toilet, and the phone''s owner seeks to retrieve it with some exploratory handiwork.
But the bathroom happened to be on a Metro-North Railroad train. And in a twist worthy of a screwball comedy, the man''s fishing expedition left his arm all too intimately attached to the stainless steel commode. Before too long, the ill-fated expedition on Wednesday and its rippling effects had left thousands of commuters inconvenienced as trains were rerouted while workers feverishly tried to free the man''s arm.
"It cost our customers a long, convoluted commute, and it cost this railroad many thousands of dollars," said Dan Brucker, a spokesman for Metro-North.
Edwin Gallart, 41, of the Edenwald section of the Bronx, was aboard car 8371 of the 6:19 p.m. Harlem Line local train out of Grand Central Terminal when his cellphone fell into the toilet, officials said. When he reached into the bowl to retrieve it, his arm became trapped from hand to elbow. Minutes later, a passenger alerted a conductor, who arranged for the train to pick up a supervisor at its first stop, 125th Street.
Alas, the supervisor could not release Mr. Gallart''s arm. Train operators arranged for rescue crews to meet the train a few stops later at the Fordham station, where firefighters used no less than three sets of power tools, including the jaws of life, to cut through the toilet, which was ripped from the lavatory before being sliced open."
"October 31, 2003
The Worst Place to Drop a Cellphone? Here''s One
By MICHELLE O''DONNELL
It was a natural reaction to a simple problem: a cellphone falls into a toilet, and the phone''s owner seeks to retrieve it with some exploratory handiwork.
But the bathroom happened to be on a Metro-North Railroad train. And in a twist worthy of a screwball comedy, the man''s fishing expedition left his arm all too intimately attached to the stainless steel commode. Before too long, the ill-fated expedition on Wednesday and its rippling effects had left thousands of commuters inconvenienced as trains were rerouted while workers feverishly tried to free the man''s arm.
"It cost our customers a long, convoluted commute, and it cost this railroad many thousands of dollars," said Dan Brucker, a spokesman for Metro-North.
Edwin Gallart, 41, of the Edenwald section of the Bronx, was aboard car 8371 of the 6:19 p.m. Harlem Line local train out of Grand Central Terminal when his cellphone fell into the toilet, officials said. When he reached into the bowl to retrieve it, his arm became trapped from hand to elbow. Minutes later, a passenger alerted a conductor, who arranged for the train to pick up a supervisor at its first stop, 125th Street.
Alas, the supervisor could not release Mr. Gallart''s arm. Train operators arranged for rescue crews to meet the train a few stops later at the Fordham station, where firefighters used no less than three sets of power tools, including the jaws of life, to cut through the toilet, which was ripped from the lavatory before being sliced open."
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