F Train Breakdown Spirals Into Sweaty, 'Panicked' Horror Show: See Disturbing Video

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — Monday morning's commute on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan was not altogether wonderful. It was slow, it was stalled, it was stalled some more, and at one point, a small but steady waterfall of storm runoff began to leak through the ceiling onto dozens of tightly packed passengers, none of whom could be 100 percent sure they weren't about to drown to death in the sudden second coming of Sandy. Here's what that looked like.

But the (ultimately just kind of sad and amusing) F train waterfall of the a.m. hours was, as Gothamist's John Del Signore put it at the time, "magical" and "calming" compared to the horror show that was to unfold at dusk.

"Just had a very memorable, yet not so fun experience on the train ride home," F train rider and city employee Michael Sciaraffo wrote on Facebook around 7:30 p.m. Monday, in a post that would be shared hundreds of times in the coming hours.

UPDATE, Tuesday, June 6: MTA Responds To F Train Ride From Hell

"I was taking a packed F train home, that had no working AC," Sciaraffo wrote, "when we abruptly stopped in a tunnel. The engines shut down, the lights go off and with no exaggeration, we were stuck there for 45 minutes in what felt like 120 degree heat."

Not long into the ordeal, according to Sciaraffo, "the windows started getting steamed up" and "claustrophobia, panic and heat exhaustion began to set in." (For more local news stories that affect you, sign up for Patch's free email newsletters and real-time alerts for your NYC neighborhood.)

A photo from inside the train, posted by passenger Samantha Mushnick, showed the words "I WILL SURVIVE" drawn into the window steam:

Sciaraffo later told ABC7 news cameras: "It was getting really, really unbearable. People started to strip. People started to sweat. People were getting nervous. People had anxiety."

Once the F train from hell finally pulled into the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in SoHo, commuters trapped inside could be seen in horror-genre smartphone video — posted to Twitter by Brooklyn resident Chelsea Lawrence — pressed up against the train's sweat-fogged windows and clawing at its doors.

Prepare to be disturbed:

And so it happened that through the night, as all this witness testimony and video footage spread on social media, a sort of shift occurred: The MTA subway system's mounting delays and crumbling infrastructure, a crisis at least twice as bad today as it was five years ago, seemed to graduate in the public consciousness from annoying and infuriating in a mostly first-world way to legitimately scary and life-threatening.

Here's the whole story, as recalled by Sciaraffo on Facebook.

First, we were told it was train traffic ahead of us (we all know that lie all too well). As we waited with no further communication, people started getting very worried. Almost everyone began fanning themselves with paper, as it felt as if it was just getting warmer and warmer. Beads of sweat began rolling down people's faces. We started to tell everyone to open the side windows and open the doors the three inches we could pry it open to, with books, to get the cross ventilation from the passing trains. Coats started getting removed, and then people were sweating so much from standing in this crowded oven, that people starting taking off shirts and some pants. One lady disrobed while others covered her with a jacket so no one could see. Some people started getting faint, and we started to try and see if we could identify any elderly people or pregnant women on the car who were standing or needed water to see if they needed to sit and drink. Claustrophobia, panic and heat exhaustion began to set in for many folks. At this point, the windows started getting steamed up.

Then after about 30 minutes of heightened anxiety, they told us the truth. We had experienced a severe maintenance malfunction and the train was unable to move. At this point, we began to discuss making decisions about how we were going to evacuate, who would go first and who would need help. Suddenly, we felt the train jerk oddly forward and backward, which didn't feel right. It turned out there another train behind us, started to push our train ahead into the next station, at about 1 mph.

Once we pulled into the station, a mob of people had filled the platform waiting for our train, which left no room to get us off. We had to wait another 10 minutes, sweating, in the dark, before we could get off, while the people on the platform took pictures of us dripping sweat through the windows while we were trying to pry the doors open, as it was getting dangerously hot in the train car. People started to yell things like please get me off and I feel sick.

Finally, they had cleared people off the platform and opened the doors for us to get off. The feeling of remotely cooler air felt amazing compared to how it felt on the train. I never enjoyed the dank, smelly aroma of a train station more in my life.

It was a terrible experience to endure, no doubt. But I am very grateful that despite how terrible this experience was, it wasn't something more serious, like a terror attack, and that ultimately, we will all be making it home to our families safely. God bless.

Say what you will about New Yorkers, but when stuff hits the fan, we know to mobilize and work together in a tragedy.

Additional video from inside the tropical F train, all of it confirming Sciaraffo's account, has since popped up online. Here's one from Mushnick:

According to an artist on board named Lisa Di Donato, one passenger tried to use a can of Altoids to pry open the train's doors. (Click the right arrow on her Instagram chronicle, below, for more images from inside the train.)

Local actress Hui-Shan Yong said she was on board as well. "People were hyperventilating!" she wrote on Twitter. "And we couldn't open the doors or anything."

Here are a couple parting shots from other passengers, in case you still had a glimmer of hope for the disintegrating NYC subway system:

The MTA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.

This story has been updated. Lead image via Chelsea Lawrence/Twitter