Grass fire interrupts East Bay BART service
PLEASANT HILL — A small grass fire led BART to stop service for nearly an hour Thursday between the system’s Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre and Concord stations, authorities said.
Shortly before 6:15 p.m., Contra Costa County Fire Protection District firefighters responded to reports of a fire along a trackway behind the 1100 block of Briarwood Way in unincorporated Walnut Creek.
Firefighters arrived to find a small patch of grass about 100 by 20 feet wide on fire, and worked to extinguish it within minutes.
At 6:38 p.m., BART officials sent a service advisory stopping service and said County Connection bus service would run mutual-aid buses between the two stations on its Nos. 11, 14 and 15 lines.
Trains were turning back east at the Concord station and west at the Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre station. By 7:30 p.m., BART said normal service had been re-established, with a continuing major delay on the system’s Antioch line in the Antioch and San Francisco International Airport directions.
There were no initial reports of injury or property damage in connection with the fire, and a cause was still under investigation Thursday night.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.