the power of one

the story of how one person trying to stay warm can cost lots of people lots of money and lots of time for years:

Fire causes long-term disruption on New York subway lines

2 Subway Lines Crippled by Fire; Long Repair Seen

summary... sunday, a homeless man near the chambers street station (on the A and C lines (blue lines, further south in manhattan, just north of the WTC site, etc.)) lit a shopping cart full of garbage on fire to keep warm... the fire spread to a control room in the station which contained some 600 relays, switches, etc.... cripping the C line (which will not be fixed in the near future) and reducing the A line to 1/3 the number of trains... it could take 3-5 years to fix, and there are only two companies in the world who make the right parts to replace what all was damaged... besides two of NYC's busiest subway lines be crippled, costing lots of people lots of time (A and C combined have about 580,000 riders on an average weekday), repairs were estimated to cost several million dollars.

dude.