BART Restores Normal Service After Derailment and Fire Near Orinda

Update, 9 a.m. Tuesday: BART has restored service to its busiest corridor after successfully removing a pair of train cars that derailed near Orinda early Monday.

The derailment was followed by a brief fire that involved the two cars. They were part of an eight-car train on the first eastbound run of 2024 between San Francisco International Airport and Antioch, a route BART designates as its Yellow Line.

The derailment blocked westbound and eastbound tracks, forcing BART to rely on the AC Transit and County Connection bus agencies to ferry passengers between Rockridge and Walnut Creek stations and stops.

BART hired a massive industrial crane to “re-rail” the cars that went off the track so they could be moved, an operation that required shutting down two lanes of Highway 24 just east of Orinda until late Monday evening.

In a Monday night update, BART said the re-railed cars were en route to a train yard, and crews were repairing trackside damage. While the agency said it would continue to rely on local bus agencies to carry passengers in the shutdown area Monday night, “​We hope for normal train service between Walnut Creek and Rockridge tomorrow.”

The agency announced at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday that normal service was resuming on its Antioch-SFO route.

Monday’s derailment and fire occurred when a train operator attempted to manually reset a switch along the tracks just east of the Orinda station. Further details of that sequence of events, which BART said are under investigation, are reported in our original post below.

Original post, last updated at 2:15 p.m. Monday

Service on BART’s busiest line has been disrupted indefinitely in the wake of a Monday morning train derailment that sparked a fire aboard two train cars.

BART said the low-speed derailment and fire occurred just after 9 a.m. Monday, and it involved an eastbound Antioch (Yellow Line) train just east of the Orinda station.

BART spokesperson Jim Allison said all passengers aboard the eight-car train had been evacuated safely and that the Moraga-Orinda Fire Department had extinguished the fire. Allison said he didn’t know how many passengers were aboard the train, one of the first to run on New Year’s morning.

Fire agency spokesperson Dennis Rein said a total of nine people had been transported to Contra Costa County hospitals with minor injuries.

Rein had no information on the extent of the injuries but said reports from the scene indicated that all those affected could walk on their own.

Allison said the sequence of events that led to the derailment began just after the train left Orinda headed for Lafayette.

An unspecified problem with signaling equipment along the track between the two stations required the train to stop at an interlocking — a point where the train could cross over from one track to the other.

According to BART dispatch tapes, at 8:49 a.m., the train operator was instructed to climb down from the train and manually reset switches, allowing her train to pass through the interlocking.

That process took about 15 minutes, and after twice confirming with a train controller at the BART operations center that the equipment was correctly aligned, the operator was given clearance to pass through the interlocking.

The operator told the controller she sensed trouble as soon as the train moved forward.

“I haven’t crossed over all the way,” she told the train controller. “I’m right in the middle, but I stopped because I felt my train going the other way.”

While walking back through the train, the operator reported two of the cars on fire.

The train operator reported that the flames died down quickly. Images from a news helicopter over the scene showed one car stopped at an angle across the tracks. One side of the vehicle appeared to be scorched.

In response to the incident, the California Highway Patrol shut down all lanes of Highway 24 adjacent to the site of the blaze to give emergency responders access to the scene. The freeway was mostly reopened by 11 a.m., with only the two left lanes in the eastbound direction remaining closed.

Robert Prinz, policy director for Bike East Bay, said on social media he was among those forced to evacuate the train.

In a post on X, Prinz said he heard no announcement that there was trouble on the train until “passengers from the front of the train started running through our middle car to the back and letting everyone know.”

“We had no idea if the train was being evacuated if we needed to leave our bikes, or what,” Prinz wrote. “Luckily, all the passengers seemed to keep their cool, and nobody panicked. But the lack of any information could have made everything much worse.”

BART was turning around westbound Antioch-SFO trains at Walnut Creek; eastbound trains were going no further than Rockridge in North Oakland. The agency said AC Transit provided a free bus bridge between Rockridge and Walnut Creek in both directions, making all station stops.

Because the train involved in Monday’s incident stopped in the middle of the interlocking, it’s effectively blocking both westbound and eastbound tracks.

Allison said the agency was still trying to decide how to move the disabled train. “It may require getting a crane from another entity,” he said.

“The bottom line is that we’re not going to have train service on the Yellow Line between Lafayette and Orinda until further notice,” Allison said.

Allison said BART’s system safety department will conduct “a thorough investigation” of the incident. The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates passenger rail services, is also expected to investigate.