Several people suffered minor injuries and service was disrupted when a commuter train derailed and caught fire in the San Francisco Bay Area on New Year's Day, officials said.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train had just left the city of Orinda toward Lafayette around 9 a.m. Monday when the front two cars went off the track, said Jim Allison, spokesman for the agency.
All passengers were evacuated and firefighters quickly extinguished the flames, he added.
Several travelers were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, Allison said. The total number of injured is currently unknown. The rest of the passengers went back to Orinda Station.
Passenger Enrique Gonzalez said the train was late and when it started moving again, he heard “a few loud bangs” and saw “smoke rising between the carriages.”
“I was sitting right at the window and saw the flames rising,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Early indications suggest the derailment occurred on an interlocking section of tracks where trains can change tracks, Allison said. It was not immediately clear what caused the outage about 8 miles (13 kilometers) northeast of Oakland.
Authorities initially did not provide any information about how many people were on board the train when it went off the tracks.
Traffic was disrupted in both directions along a 12-mile (19-kilometer) stretch between Rockridge and Walnut Creek, the Chronicle reported. BART officials said the Orinda station will likely remain closed the rest of the day as crews remove damaged cars and inspect the tracks.
Although the transit system carried fewer passengers than usual on New Year's Day, the suspension of service will likely affect tens of thousands of people, Allison added.
“It is certainly unfortunate that people are stranded on a holiday like this,” he lamented.