The shocking Monday morning BART train derailment that left nine people injured and a train on fire seemed to be a combination of mechanical failures and human error, and that $2.2 million “Fleet of the Future” train will be out of commission for a while.

It was an awful start to the new year for BART, as a train running between Orinda and Lafayette derailed and caught fire just after 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day. This forced the evacuation of between 100 and 150 riders, and nine of them were treated for injuries. While the evacuation was pretty swiftly completed within about 20 minutes, the BART system was a mess the remainder of Monday, and the passengers who were on board describe a pretty harrowing experience.

The video above from NBC Bay Area’s Jodi Hernandez has stunning footage of a BART train in flames, and first-hand accounts from passengers. “We just panicked and jumped off the train onto the rocks,” rider Lia Burrell says. “It’s like some movie type thing, you don't expect to do that. But we had to save our life, and the flames just kept getting bigger.”

So what on earth caused this? NBC Bay Area has obtained plenty of audio, including a recording of what passengers were told before the disaster. Before things got truly hairy, a male voice came over the intercom and told riders, “We have an operator on the ground resolving the issue, we’ll have your train moving into Lafayette shortly.”

But the Bay Area News Group has details on the derailment disaster and notes that a computerized track switching system lost contact with another system that manages it. The BART Operations Control Center instructed the driver of the train to switch the tracks manually — which apparently involved hopping off the stopped train and fiddling with the tracks using a set of tools.

NBC Bay Area obtained internal BART audio where we hear a dispatcher telling the driver, “I’ll just need you to install two cranks.”

The exasperated driver responds, “This is a workout!”

And the task somehow did not go as envisioned. Once the tracks were switched and the cars were moving, the cars started going the wrong direction, moving onto the opposite track. The driver was then told to put the train in reverse, running to the opposite (SFO-bound) end of the train to move it in that direction, and when the train started to reverse, that is when the derailment happened and the fires started, at which point the cars stopped, and passengers started prying the doors open by hand and hopping out.

“There’s two cars that are on fire,” the driver tells the dispatcher. “Another car, 3024, is on fire. Like, it derailed.”

BART Director Deborah Allen told NBC Bay Area, “At this point right now, it appears it is human error.” Allen noted it could have been driver error, or the driver may have been given incorrect instructions by the Operations Control Center team.

In the audio obtained by NBC Bay Area, the operations team, unsurprisingly, seems to think it was the driver and not them at fault.

“She was trying to get (inaudible) a straight-through route, and then she ended up crossing over,” one dispatcher voice says. “And now she’s got two cars derailed.”

To which a colleague responds, “Goddamn.”

We’re likely to hear more about this, because BART’s investigation is still ongoing. They have 60 days to provide a full report to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), who will then examine the report. Until then, the matter is considered “under investigation,” and the results are not public. But as we see with NBC Bay Area’s obtaining of internal audio recordings, these details may have a way of becoming public anyway.

Related: BART Train Derails, Injuring Nine [SFist]

Image: @LuisC_Marin via Twitter