Quiet bomb scare at BART

At 6:21 p.m. on Jan. 13, BART Police received the report of a suspicious man on a train headed from San Francisco International Airport to the Millbrae station. Since there was no specific threat or additional information about the bomb, officials chose to delay the train at the Millbrae station without notifying passengers or shutting down the station.

An officer searched the train, but was not able to find the suspicious man or a witness to identify him. Meanwhile, passengers waited while their train was delayed with no explanation.

"They should have probably have let us know and given us the option to get off," said Sono Taki, a regular BART commuter.

Determining what threats are serious enough to stop trains, cause delays and worry passengers is a gray area for BART.

"When we get threats we have to ask ourselves how specific the threat is," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson.

Last year BART had five bomb threats and only two of them posed a specific danger worthy of closing a station. The first happened on March 21 in Emeryville and the second was in June, Johnson said.

In 2003, BART received eight bomb threats, Johnson said.

The call to stop a train or evacuate a station comes from BART police brass, but seldom does that get communicated to station employees who in turn can notify riders, three BART employees said yesterday.

Based on previous training, employees were ready to shut down the station on Jan. 13, but were told not to by managers, the employees said.

Keeping both employees and customers in dark is both worrisome and understandable by regular BART riders.

"It might just create panic, but if something actually happens people will be upset," said June, a BART commuter at the Millbrae station who declined to give her last name.

June recommends setting up color-coded threat levels, much like the federal terror alert system. However, other commuters aren't convinced that would do the trick.

"All the people in this country are already too terrorized," said Nidhi Nayyar, another Millbrae station commuter.

BART does, however, handle bomb threats much like other transportation agencies.

Caltrain receives a similar number of threats each year, but deals mostly with suspicious packages instead of suspicious people, said spokeswoman Jayme Kunz.

The agency contracts with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office to monitor the line and respond to emergencies. If the threat is specific enough, the Sheriff's Office will evacuate a station or stop a train. Last year, Caltrain only had once such incident, Kunz said.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106. What do you think of this story? Send a letter to the editor: letters@smdailyjournal.com.