The real reason for the Monorail Silver fire was a side tire that got hung up and dragged from Epcot. The Monorail did catch on fire near the straigtaway on the North South Road just over bridge one. When the train caugt on fire the passengers opened the door. They did this by sticking their arm out of the Mark IV window and popping the latch on tyhe bottom side of the handle. They then climbed out on top of the cars and walked down to the nose.
After this incident WDW did some immediate actions; first they installed hatches on every Mark IV train two in every car, they instituted a back cab, an intercom system was made available that immediately rang the front or back cab operator, Reedy Creek developed a Monorail evacuation plan that included ordering a new truck and even using ropes to evacute passengers ( I know I filmed an excellent video of evacuting a train by ropes to the ground for the test), Managaers were given strict guidelines on whether to dispatch a train with any report of any odor or sound (In fact a Supervisor was fired shortly after for dispatching a train with a suspected odor), and also new Allison heat detection device was installed on Monorail Coral that was supposed to detect heat in the wheel wells to prevent something like the monorail silver fire from happenning again.
BTW the Reedy Creek truck can reach the train if it is stuck near the Grand Flo, but only the end the passengers will still need to travel down the train to the waiting basket. On the Mark VI there are hand rails on top of the train as well as a rope that comes down the the nose of the train.
Scotty
ex-Monorail Central
