Firefighters rescued an elderly man in a wheelchair who accidentally fell off the platform and onto the Metrorail tracks at the Santa Clara station about 7:45 a.m. Friday.

Metrorail trains were halted, power to four stations was shut down and Miami-Dade Transit authorities dispatched buses to stations to keep passengers moving.

Miami Fire Rescue managed to extract the man after the complicated rescue, officials said. No trains were headed to the Santa Clara station at the time the man fell.

According to Lt. Ignatius Carroll, spokesman for Miami Fire Rescue, the man in his late seventies accidentally led his electric wheelchair off the edge of the station platform. The man was not strapped into his wheelchair and was hurt badly after the 10-foot fall onto the concrete floor and metal rails, injuring his head and hip.

''It was a freak accident,'' Carroll said.

But the fall could have easily taken his life, Carroll said. The man fell onto two of the Metrorail's three rails. Inches away from his paralyzed body and metal wheelchair was the third rail, which powers all trains.

''Had he fallen and hit the third rail, he would have been electrocuted,'' Carroll said.

After the difficult extraction, officials transferred the man to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

''The fall was significant . . . at his age, he's somewhat fragile,'' Carroll said.

According to transit officials, power was shut down at the Civic Center, Santa Clara, Allapattah and Earlington Heights stations for 45 minutes during the morning rush hour, which delayed thousands during their morning commute. During that time, passengers were transferred by bus to their intended destinations.

Miami-Dade Transit spokesman John Labriola said that by 8:30 a.m., the stations were powered up. Minutes later, trains resumed their normal schedules.

The accident marks the fourth schedule-disrupting and life-threatening Miami-Dade Transit incident this year, including last week's case of a woman who fell off the Coconut Grove Metrorail platform and ended up trapped between the train and the platform.

In September, a 45-year-old homeless man jumped from a Metromover platform to retrieve his hat and was crushed by an oncoming car as it approached the 11th Street station.

And in April, a suicidal teenager survived after jumping in front of an oncoming Metrorail train and being run over by three cars at the Douglas Road station.

Herald staff writer Larry Lebowitz contributed to this report.

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