NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Police are investigating three separate subway fires that were set inside train cars on the No. 1 line within the last week.
On Wednesday, a debris-filled shopping cart was set ablaze and left in a car on a northbound 1 train at 181st Street.
The incident happened days after video captured a rolling suitcase engulfed in flames aboard a 1 train at the 18th Street Station around 10 a.m. Friday.
Eyewitness Brendan Cochrane, a writer and director from East Harlem, took out his phone and started filming when he noticed the blazing suitcase one car over from his.
"My feeling was this is not something that happens every day and it was surprising to see," Cochrane told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond.
He said riders appeared to be annoyed about the inconvenience rather than concerned about the danger of the situation.
"It's sad that we're at a place where we don't care about a lot of things," Cochrane said.
Just 24 hours earlier, police responded to the 23rd Street Station after a man reportedly tried to set himself on fire aboard a 1 train.
It's not clear if the three incidents are connected. Police have not released surveillance video from any of the incidents.
Lisa Daglian, an executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, called the incidents frightening.
"And it's coming at a particularly bad time, exactly the time when people are starting to come back from the omicron surge and when the MTA really needs its riders back on board," she said.
Aside from police, Daglian said the system needs more station agents.
In an interview on WCBS 880 Thursday morning, Mayor Eric Adams said there is now a targeted approach to address subway safety with a focus on getting more police officers on the platforms and in the trains.
"We have had several thousand subway inspections by my officers. We're going to get them on the trains. The visibility plays a role because that's the omnipresence that we need, but we also are not going to turn our backs to people who are living and sleeping and disrupting our system. Historically, they have been ignored," Adams said. "Those days of just being on the subway, living, disrupting services those day are at the end."
According to TheCity.nyc, there were over 1,000 subway fires in 2021 — 12% more than the year before.
"Certainly the fact that there is an increase in fires and an increase in debris leads one to wonder why isn't that being taken care of," Daglian said.
In March 2020, a shopping cart fire killed a subway motorman in Harlem.
In a statement to NBC New York, an MTA spokesperson said, "These scary episodes underscore what the MTA has been saying for some time: We need to deal with the reality that people with mental health issues are too frequently creating situations that are dangerous and terrifying for our riders, and also for themselves."
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