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Bay Area pounded by latest winter storm

Rush hour commuters crowd BART platform yesterday at the Embarcadero station
Sunni Khalid
/
KALW
Rush hour commuters crowd BART platform yesterday at the Embarcadero station

The announcements over the public address system at BART stations during Tuesday rush hour only added to the frustration of hundreds of commuters, who stood seven or eight deep at platforms waiting for the trains to take them home.

BART experienced several delays due to Tuesday's weather and some routes were single-tracking as a result of high winds and power outages.

The Antioch-SFO line was single-tracked between Concord and Pleasant Hill due to a train striking a fallen tree on the tracks, BART said at 5:20 p.m. The train was taken out of service.

The Berryessa/North San Jose- Richmond line was also single-tracked between Richmond and El Cerrito due to a power outage at the Richmond yard. The Richmond-Millbrae line wasn't running at all between these stops. A large tree fell on a train at the Richmond Station platform, BART said, damaging power equipment.

When thousands of commuters finally did make it home, many of them found out their homes were without power.

PG&E crews scrambled Tuesday evening to restore power to nearly 297,000 customers around the Bay Area, officials said in the latest update on regional outages at 4:30 p.m.

The South Bay is still reporting the most outages, with 131,158 without power.

In the East Bay nearly 92,000 were affected; more than 63,000 on the Peninsula; another 8,100 in the North Bay and about 1,000 in San Francisco, according to PG&E spokesperson Megan McFarland.

Sunni M. Khalid is a veteran of more than 40 years in journalism, having worked in print, radio, television, and web journalism.