By Erik N. Nelson
Inside Bay Area (California)
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All Rights Reserved
OAKLAND, Calif. — Power has been restored after an electrical fire near the Coliseum BART station forced evacuation of a stranded train and shut down BART service this morning on the Dublin-Pleasanton and Fremont lines, officials said.
Evacuees left in groups of about 30, along the elevated tracks, led by rescue workers past the line’s 1,000-volt third rail, said Battalion Chief Lorenzo Frediani of Oakland Fire Department.
“You can’t mess around with this thing or someone will get fried. There’s no forgiving with 1,000 volts,” Frediani said.
Nine passengers had been left on the train, because they weren’t capable of walking a mile from the train to the station. Power was restored about 12:05 p.m. and the train was moved slowly to the station.
The remaining passengers were taken off the train at 12:15 p.m., officials said. Full service was restored at 12:20 p.m.
One passenger said the evacuation was by the book. “Everybody was taking turns getting off, like you learned in kindergarten. Nobody was pushing, nobody was panicking,” said Alison Lewis, 64, of Hayward.
“Everybody was taking turns getting off, like you learned in kindergarten.”
The 10:13 a.m. fire at an electrical substation shut off power to the third rail that powers trains, stranding a train near Coliseum, which was still being evacuated as of 11 a.m., according to a recorded announcement by BART spokesman Linton Johnson. The fire was not on BART tracks or near any trains and no passengers were ever in danger, Johnson said.
The outage forced trains on the two BART lines to turn around at the Bayfair station, where passengers waited to board a bus that would take them to the closed stations and back to BART trains at the Fruitvale or Lake Merritt stations, Johnson said. The transit system was acquiring more buses for the bus bridge as of 11 a.m.