Three firefighters and a dozen passengers were injured in Florida on Saturday when a fire truck with flashing lights drove around rail crossing arms and into the path of a high-speed passenger train while waiting for another train to pass, according to video of the incident and a person briefed on the events.
The crash occurred at 10:45 a.m. in Delray Beach’s bustling downtown area. In the aftermath, the Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front end smashed, about a block from the Delray Beach Fire Rescue truck. The Sun-Sentinel claimed that its ladder had been pulled off and was lying in the grass several yards away.
According to a social media post from Delray Beach Fire Rescue, three firefighters are in stable condition at a hospital. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue transported 12 passengers from the train to the hospital with minor injuries.
The person familiar with the details of the crash, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal what happened due to the ongoing investigation, stated that the fire truck stopped at the crossing and waited for a freight train to pass before maneuvering around the lowered crossing arms.
The crash video shows the fire truck going around automobiles halted at the crossing, its lights flashing, to cross the double tracks.
Emmanuel Amaral hurried to the site on his golf cart after hearing a loud crash and screeching train brakes while enjoying breakfast a few blocks away. He witnessed firefighters crawling out of the front window of their wrecked truck and dragging injured comrades away from the tracks. One of their helmets rested a few hundred feet from the crash.
“The front of the train is completely crushed, and some parts from the fire engine were caught in the front, but it broke the vehicle in half. “It split the fire truck in half, and debris was everywhere,” Amaral explained.
A Brightline safety officer stated that the entire community is involved in protecting railroad safety, and drivers should never drive around closed gates.
The Federal Railroad Administration will investigate. A representative for the National Transportation Safety Board said in the afternoon that the agency was still gathering information about the collision and had not determined whether to investigate.
The NTSB is already looking into two collisions involving Brightline’s high-speed trains that killed three people early this year at the same crossing in Melbourne on the railroad’s route from Miami to Orlando.
Since Brightline began operations in July 2017, more than 100 people have died as a result of train collisions, making it the nation’s deadliest railroad. However, the majority of those deaths have been suicides, individuals attempting to run over the tracks ahead of a train, or drivers who bypassed crossing gates rather than waiting for a train to pass. Brightline was not determined to be at fault in the earlier deaths.
Railroad safety has been an issue since February 2023, when a Norfolk Southern train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio, spilling dangerous chemicals and catching fire. Regulators encouraged the sector to enhance safety, and members of Congress presented a package of reforms, but railroads have yet to make significant changes to their operations, and the measure has stagnated.
Earlier this month, two Union Pacific train workers were killed when their train collided with a semitrailer truck blocking a crossing in Pecos, a small West Texas town. Three further individuals were hurt, and the local Chamber of Commerce building was damaged.