BART Service Restored On Pittsburg/Bay Point Line In East Bay After Fire Near Tracks

CONCORD (CBS SF) -- PG&E was working to restore power to customers in Walnut Creek Thursday evening after downed lines caused an outage that shut down BART service for around two hours and affected as many as 3,000 customers.

The downed power lines were reported in the area of Jones and Walden Roads just after 6 p.m., according to PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian.

BART officials said a tree limb fell on power lines in the area, knocking them on to the tracks.

Power was shut down on the BART line and BART announced a service suspension on the Pittsburg/Bay Point Line extending from the Lafayette to Concord stations at 6:23 p.m.

The power lines were removed from the tracks around 8:15 p.m. and full service restored around 8:45 p.m., according to BART.

The power outage caused by the downed lines also affected as many as 3,000 customers in the surrounding area of Walnut Creek, according to PG&E. That number was down to 323 customers as of around 9:45 p.m., Sarkissian said.

PG&E worked to remove the power lines from the BART tracks as quickly as possible this evening and will wait until after BART service is done for the night before completing all repairs to the lines, Sarkissian said.

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BART riders tweeted pictures of the lines that had formed at the Lafayette station.

Angelee Field tweeted "Some fire and power outage caused a major delay on my #BART line. All dumped off at #Lafayette."

Srinivasan Gopalan tweeted "Craziness at Lafayette Bart due to electric problem up ahead. 1bus so far in place of a dozen #bart #fail."

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