(The Associated Press circulated the following article on September 29.)
LAWRENCE, N.Y. — A former state senator slipped through a gap between a train and a Long Island Railroad station platform, and is demanding the spaces get fixed.
Carol Berman, 82, said she broke her ankle in two places and hurt her ribs in Thursday’s fall.
The LIRR “better get this thing fixed before more people get hurt,” Berman told Newsday in a phone interview from her hospital room. “It’s outrageous.”
Berman, a Democrat who was a state senator from 1978 to 1984, said she was scheduled for ankle surgery Friday.
LIRR spokesman Sam Zambuto said Berman told investigators from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the LIRR, the sun was in her eyes as she exited the train.
Railroad staffers pulled Berman to safety after she fell 4 feet onto the tracks at the Lawrence station, Zambuto said. The train was delayed about 40 minutes while Berman was removed.
It’s at least the third time in recent months a commuter has fallen through one of the LIRR platform gaps. In August, a tourist from Minnesota was killed after slipping through a gap and being struck by a train.
National Transportation Safety Board officials are investigating the death, and state authorities are studying the platform gaps, which can be up to 15 inches wide and are caused by a station’s curvature and the design of trains, whose sides are straight.
There were 59 gap-related incidents out of 91 million riders who used the LIRR last year, according to the MTA.