(Updated at 6:30 p.m.) A person has been hit by a train at the Clarendon Metro Station.
Emergency vehicles have surrounded the station, shutting down N. Highland Street and partially blocking Clarendon and Wilson Boulevards. Public access to the station has been cut off.
First Day of Fall, Flash Flood Watch — Today is officially the first day of fall, but it’s not going to feel like it. A storm system bringing tropical moisture to the area will provide warm temperatures and heavy rains that may produce flash flooding. [Capital Weather Gang]
Reminder: DUI Checkpoint Tonight — As part of a national DUI crackdown, Arlington County Police will be conducting a sobriety checkpoint somewhere in the county tonight.
Arlington Central Library (1015 N. Quincy Street) was evacuated around lunchtime today due to an odor of gas in the building.
Firefighters investigated the odor, but have since left. Library spokesman Peter Golkin says the library was back open as of 1:45 p.m.
Update at 3:55 p.m.— The fire is out and most emergency responders are clearing from the scene.
South Glebe Road is being shut down just east of Arlington Ridge Road due to a house fire.
County Adding Historical Preservation Tools — In an effort to preserve historic buildings in Arlington, the county is considering some new policies to its “toolbox.” Among the possible new strategies: purchasing properties threatened with demolition, using a “transfer of development rights” to convince developers to preserve historic properties and further surveying residential property in the county to find and catalog more historic properties. [Sun Gazette]
Man With Terror Links Owned Arlington Condo — Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi Arabian national whose Florida mansion was regularly visited by the 9/11 hijackers, also owned property in Arlington. In the mid-1990s, Ghazzawi owned the Penthouse condo in Rosslyn’s The Atrium building. [Washington Post]
Update at 4:50 p.m. — At this point we’ve heard at least three four ACFD units dispatched to assist with swift water rescues.
Several squads from the Arlington County Fire Department have been dispatched to Fairfax County to assist with swift water rescues.
Businesses Encouraged By Action on Sign Ordinance — Business owners are hopeful that the new, proposed changes to the sign ordinance will dramatically “streamline” the time-consuming, costly process for getting signs approved in Arlington. [Washington Examiner]
DJO Student’s Dry-Cleaning Research Makes Headlines — It’s not everyday that a high school sophomore’s science project makes it into an peer-reviewed academic research journal, but that’s exactly what happened to Bishop O’Connell High School student Alexa Dantzler. The 15-year-old’s research on chemicals that remain on clothing after dry-cleaning, conducted with the help of the Georgetown University chemistry department, was formally published last week. [Washington Post]
Historic ‘Arlington Oak’ Toppled — A historic tree in Arlington National Cemetery is now firewood thanks to Hurricane Irene. The cemetery revealed last night that the ‘Arlington Oak’ at the Kennedy gravesite had been knocked down by the storm’s high winds and steady rains. “That tree had a significant legacy here,” said a cemetery official. [CBS News]
Firefighters Collecting for MDA — Arlington’s firefighters are out “filling the boot” at busy intersections to collect money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. A medic crew was out at the intersection of Glebe Road and Columbia Pike last night, and the crew from Engine 109 was spotted out in the Shirlington area, among others. [Shirlington Village Blog]
(Updated at 1:25 p.m.) Arlington County firefighters and paramedics helped to rescue an injured construction worker from one of the top floors of an unfinished office building in Ballston.
A large piece of glass reportedly fell on a worker on the 9th floor of the construction site at 800 N. Glebe Road around 12:30 p.m. Rescuers were apparently able to get the man down several flights of narrow stairs before loading him on to the basket of a ladder truck five floors below. The ladder was then lowered down to ground level as bystanders watched from across the street.
A man was seriously injured after a car on which he was working fell on top of him in the Douglas Park neighborhood of South Arlington.
The man reportedly had the car propped up on a small jack when something when wrong and the vehicle fell on him. Police, firefighters and paramedics responded and managed to remove him from underneath the vehicle, a Toyota Camry sedan.
From 4:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 28, first responders from Arlington’s police, fire and sheriff’s departments, as well as the Arlington County Office of Emergency Management and the Alexandria Police Department, will conduct a joint training exercise inside the mall.
“The purpose of the exercise is to test the response of Arlington County’s public safety agencies in a simulated emergency situation,” Arlington Police said in a statement. No word on the exact type of emergency that will be simulated.
Police Searching For Serial Groper — Arlington Police are on the lookout for a man who has been assaulting women and girls by grabbing their breasts as they walk down the street. Among the victims are Eastern European women working as lifeguards and a 13-year-old girl. The attacks started in June. [WUSA9]
Virginia NOW Endorsements — The Virginia National Organization for Women PAC has endorsed four Arlington candidates for state office. Virginia NOW endorsed both Adam Ebbin and Libby Garvey in the three-way race for the 30th state Senate District (skipping over Rob Krupicka). The group also endorsed both Stephanie Clifford and Alfonso Lopez in the two-way race for the 49th House of Delegates District. [Virginia NOW]
