A fire Tuesday at the San Leandro BART station shut down all service south of Lake Merritt, including the Tri-Valley and the South Bay, for several hours.
The fire, reported just after 5 a.m., and subsequent San Leandro station closure prompted a systemwide delay, BART said. A fire official told NBC Bay Area it was a suspected electrical fire on the elevated track area.
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WATCH HEREBART reported no Blue, Green or Orange line service between Lake Merritt, Berryessa and Dublin stations. AC Transit was offering a bus bridge between the Lake Merritt and Fremont stations, and VTA was providing bus bridges between the Milpitas and Berryessa stations, BART said.
At 5:22 p.m., BART said it was about to resume running trains between the Berryessa and Hayward stations. Minutes later, the transit agency said limited service had been restored between Dublin and Bay Fair stations.
The fire damaged cables and other train control equipment in the area, BART officials said.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, and it was not clear if the flames damaged the tracks. The fire spread down to brush below the tracks, a fire official said.
"We're just assuming this was an electrical fire," Alameda County Fire Department Battalion Chief Brandon Buckley said. "It’s not a usual occurrence, but we do train for this."
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Once the flames were out, crews began to make the long and difficult repairs.
"They need to replace fiber optic cable and they also need to replace train control cable," BART spokesperson Chris Filippi said. "We’re talking about hundreds of feet of cable that have to be repaired in order for us to offer safe service."
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Power to the surrounding area also was affected, with PG&E reporting an outage to more than 2,600 customers. The utility estimated power would be restored by about 7:45 a.m.
BART's Yellow line between Antioch and San Francisco International Airport and the Red line between Richmond and Millbrae were still running.
Bay City News contributed to this report.
