A Total Disaster on Day 1 of Metro's 5th 'Surge' [VIDEO]

Metro's "Surges" have been anything but easy on Metro riders, but the beginning to the fifth Surge on Wednesday may have taken the cake for worst so far.

Metro Surge 5 is taking place on the Orange and Silver lines between East Falls Church and Ballston with single-tracking that is expected to last from July 20-31, and so far it appears WMATA is struggling to figure out how to organize the repairs to their system without everything erupting into chaos.

Wednesday started with news from WAMU that Metro couldn't complete any rehab work between East Falls Church and Ballston until they could rectify a power issue at 10 a.m., well into the day for Metro workers. WTOP tweeted it was actually even worse than that: "No work done during first morning of new Metro surge."

And that was down in the rail system. Above the East Falls Church station, it was total chaos.

Metro gave wrong info @ Ballston. Shuttle driver didn't even know where 2 go. #wmata #silverline #metrosucks pic.twitter.com/JvtrennZCf
— Gabrielle Pownall-Br (@BronzeNova202) July 20, 2016

@Metrorailinfo @wmata @faizsays @WTOP After waiting for half an hour for shuttle back to #EastFallsChurch pic.twitter.com/KGHNx5iB53
— Fazli Erdem (@fazli12345) July 20, 2016

Things didn't improve from there. Metro tweeted just after 1 p.m. that there would be additional delays in both directions on the Orange and Silver lines due to a disabled train outside of Ballston.

Orange/Silver Line: Expect additional delays in both directions due to a disabled train outside Ballston.
— Metrorail Info (@Metrorailinfo) July 20, 2016

Complaints poured in on Twitter throughout the day. Riders reported waits far beyond the 18 minutes promised by WMATA, broken escalators, broken down buses and WMATA employees who were totally lost.

As the evening rush hour began, the complaints only increased.

"People are now leaving my OL train at Court House, tired of waiting," said one rider on Twitter at 4:50 p.m.

"Been at Farg W for 35min. Have not seen 1 Ballston train pass thru outbound," added another.

And to cap it all off, there's this:

Our train operator was unresponsive on the radio for 5 minutes waiting to go through single tracking. I had to wake him up. @wmata
— Jacob Byrd (@Techno_Byrd) July 20, 2016