Big Bang

Neighbors heard a boom from a train trestle on Callowhill. There was a man on fire.

by Rick Valenzuela

Michael T. Regan KEEP OFF: The train trestle at the Callowhill substation. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

A man who witnesses say was engulfed in flames after an electrical explosion atop a Center City train trestle was laying in critical condition at Temple University Hospital more than a week after the accident.

Several people say they heard a loud boom and saw a bright flash fill the sky near SEPTA's Callowhill Substation on the Reading Viaduct at Broad and Noble streets near Callowhill at about 10 p.m. Friday, June 20.

"Everybody ran to the windows to see what was up," says Steven Dufala, an artist whose studio looks out toward the substation. "I looked out to the trestle and there was fire on the ground next to the substation building that's up there. Very quickly I realized that half of the fire I was looking at got up and was running."

SEPTA spokesman Gary Fairfax says via e-mail that a man "made contact with live wires carrying 12,000 volts of electricity."

"He was completely engulfed in flames, from the bottom of his legs to the top of his head. ... It looked like a human being made out of flames," Dufala says. "He threw himself to the ground — it looked like he was slamming himself into the ground to put himself out. And then not long after that he did put himself out, and then he started screaming, 'God help me — help me — help me.'"

The substation provides electrical power to all trains traveling through Center City, and Fairfax says the facility is not accessible to the public. Signs posted around the building warn of the high-voltage hazards, including two signs that now flank a black char mark where the accident occurred.

John Struble says he was in the building just south of the substation when a white flash shot up higher than the catenaries, the steel structures that carry the wires above the tracks, 30 feet to 40 feet above the trestle.

Struble, a furniture maker and a co-founder of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association, says he's familiar with the noises from the substation. "Those transformers pop, but they don't explode." he says.

Margaret Kip, who rents a studio across the street from the trestle, says she was facing away from the explosion, toward the Delaware River, when the sky flashed bright. "I honestly thought the bridge was being attacked," she says.

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Dufala says the man was found farther up the western branch of the trestle. "That blows my mind," he says. The tracks are fenced off, and the substation is surrounded by another fence that's crowned with razor wire. "He was not inside that when they found him, he was further down. ... Was dude just so burned up and flipped out that he didn't even feel razor wire?"

The next day, other people in Kip's building noticed a blue backpack near the scene and retrieved it looking for identification. Kip contacted the hospital about the bag and dropped it off. She says the hospital assumed she was family, and identified the man to her as Michael Harris, possibly in his mid-40s.

Dufala says he saw SEPTA employees at the substation that morning, "right where there's this whole big black explosion mark on the side, probably about 8 feet tall. It's the whole side of that wall, they were standing there fiddling with whatever was above it, huge transformer things. And that shit's just crazy, Frankenstein looking. ... I mean, it's running ... the Regional Rail lines. That's a lot of power. And it lit up the whole sky."

Dufala, whose artwork often deals with violence, says he was shaken by the incident. "I was like, Jesus Christ, it's a fucking person. And that is not an image I'm ever going to forget," he says.

(editorial@citypaper.net)