Details about BART's Tuesday fire emerge at board meeting
BART fire details emerge at board meeting
The BART board of directors met on Thursday. They received some surprising details on Tuesdays fire at the San Leandro station that shutdown almost a third of the system. The Green Line remains down and the closure will likely continue through the holiday weekend.
OAKLAND, Calif. - The BART Board of Directors met on Thursday to get some surprising details about Tuesday's fire at San Leandro station. The fire shut down almost a third of the system. More permanent repairs are underway, but questions remain.
Service is stopped in the area circled in red.
Though all 50 BART stations are now operating, Tuesday's fire at San Leandro BART still leaves the Green Line closed and could now last into the early part of next week.
Cable failure
Dig deeper:
It now appears that a small feeder cable failed.
That started a fire that grew and took out three major cables for main power, communications and train control. It now turns out, the fire should never have happened.
"The electrical fault lasted for several minutes and escalated into an arc fault and fire primarily due to a delayed response from our protective system," said BART Chief Infrastructure Officer Myat San.
The usually highly reliable protective circuit breaker system should have resolved the problem almost instantly, but took minutes to do so.
That is why the fire took out the big power cable, 500 feet of communications cable, 3,000 feet of train control cable and assorted trackside computers and equipment, resulting in the partial system shutdown.
Questions remain
BART directors have questions. BART brass answered them.
"What's the risk of this delay in the detection system occurring elsewhere?" asked BART Board of Directors Janice Li. "Are there other areas in our system with similar conditions that are being inspected to assure that they also aren't at risk?" asked Director Victor Flores.
"Yes, we have cable in the system that's 50 years old, that's original system and it's on all lines," answered BART Deputy General Manager Michael Jones.
BART has already replaced about 60 miles of more than 200 miles of old, often original cables.
Another important question is why a robust bus bridge system was not available to bypass as many as 15 closed BART stations?
"It is almost impossible to establish a bus bridge from San Leandro all the way down to Berryessa; from San Leandro all the way to Dublin when some of those areas don't even have bus service," answered Jones.
What's next:
The good news is that BART already has access to voter-approved funds to harden its system. But as one BART Director said, BART needs to speed that process way up.
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