There was an evacuation of trains on the Fremont and Dublin-Pleasanton BART lines after a fire at a substation knocked out power to part of the system. The fire started at about 10:15 this morning near the Coliseum stop, eventually knocking out power between the Fruitvale and San Leandro stations.
From reports, it sounds like around 11:30 or so, the power went out completely and people had to be evacuated from their trains. Now that sounds like fun. Details are still sketchy so we don’t know exactly how this was all done as it doesn’t sound like that easy to do.
The BART lines are still running, it's just that you have to get off at a station closest to the mess (that being between the San Leandro and Fruitvale stops) and hop on a BART shuttle to take you to all the stops in between and the next closest station that's running. From there, everything is normal. Or as normal as normal could be considering there was a fire.
Update: Everything is up and running right now so things won't be screwed up in time for the commute. Also, it turns out that there was only train that had to be evacuated, which is good news as we had visions of trains getting screwed up all up and down the line. More than 200 passengers had to get out and walk all the way to the Coliseum stop. The Chron has some photos, one of which we posted above.