Several Injured in BART Derailment
Tuesday, Feb 3, 2009 | Updated 6:55 PM PDT
Preliminary reports indicate that four or five people suffered minor injuries when two Bay Area Rapid Transit trains collided at the 12th Street station in Oakland Tuesday afternoon, a BART spokesman said.
Preliminary reports indicate that four or five people suffered minor injuries when two Bay Area Rapid Transit trains collided at the 12th Street station in Oakland Tuesday afternoon, a BART spokesman said.
Injured commuters were being taken on stretchers up escalators and elevators to ambulances waiting on Broadway, and BART officials said one wheelchair-bound passenger may have remained on a train at about 4 p.m.
Trains heading from Fremont to Richmond were delayed by between 10 and 15 minutes, and passengers on other lines could experience slight delays as well, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said.
The accident happened at about 3 p.m. and involved one train headed to Richmond and another headed to Pittsburg/Bay Point, Johnson said. One of the trains went off the rail, he said.
Passengers managed to exit the trains and used a catwalk to return to the platform.
Johnson said both of the trains were entering the 12th Street station when the collision happened, one coming from Lake Merritt and the other from West Oakland.
He said the trains were moving slowly and that the impact probably felt like a "bump" to passengers.
Images from the scene showed a train off the tracks.
Copyright Bay City News
