BART, ferries recover quickly after Northern California earthquake, tsunami warning
Thursday's earthquake that struck Northern California and the tsunami warning that followed had led to transportation impacts across the Bay Area, including a shutdown of BART through the Transbay Tube.
The earthquake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, struck at 10:44 p.m. in the ocean west of the community of Petrolia, which prompted a tsunami warning for coastal communities and orders by authorities to move to higher ground.
Officials with the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center announced that the warning has been lifted shortly before noon.
Shortly before 11 a.m., BART announced that service was stopped in the tunnel connecting Oakland and San Francisco. Several minutes later, BART announced that there was a "major delay" in all directions and that the tube remained closed.
Around noon, the agency announced that normal service has resumed, but delays continued into the afternoon.
Additionally, by the Embarcadero, the San Francisco Bay Ferry also temporarily suspended services.
"We did suspend the Oakland Alameda Water Shuttle…the small yellow boat Woodstock that operates between Alameda Landing and Jack London Square. Because of the size of that vessel and the size of the docks it ties up at, we did preventively suspend service for about an hour," Thomas Hall, spokesperson for San Francisco Bay Ferry, told CBS News Bay Area.
Hall said his team worked with the U.S. Coast Guard, along with their ferry captains on the water, to make sure all safety measures were in place.
"We have windshield checks that captains undertake when they arrive at the terminal, assuming they're already in service when the earthquake happens. They then go and run through that checklist to make sure the terminal is safe to dock at. Thankfully, this earthquake was quite a ways away, so there were no impacts due to the shaking," he added.
"I took the SMART train down and transferred to the ferry," Kathy Berger, who was traveling to San Francisco from Sebastopol to meet her daughter, told CBS News Bay Area.
Berger was on board a ferry that docked at the Ferry Building around 12:30 p.m., less than two hours after the quake struck.
She said she is grateful things went smoothly onboard.
"They said that the ferry was going to run, and we didn't need to worry about it before the warning actually ended, I believe. And I asked one of the guys his name and I told him if we go down, I'm going to say your name as we're going," Berger said.
Just a few steps away, Albert Hanna with the Treasure Island Ferry said they did not pause their operations because their route is shorter.
"Being that we're in a cove in Golden Gate, the only thing that we would probably see would be the tide going out and the tide coming in," Hanna, a deckhand with Treasure Island Ferry, told CBS News Bay Area.
He said he and his team made sure the staff were safe, and weather conditions permitted services to and from Treasure Island.
"Tsunami warnings since I've been working on the water, I think this might be our third? And that's been in a span of three years. But no they're pretty rare and we're normally unaffected," Hanna said.
Transportation agencies said that while the warning was concerning, they are grateful there were no major issues and are now back to smooth sailing.
Sooji Nam contributed reporting.
