The crash reportedly happened at 10:45 a.m. in crowded downtown Delray Beach.
In Delray Beach, Florida, a concerning incident occurred when a fire truck collided with a high-speed passenger train, resulting in injuries to three firefighters and a dozen passengers. The accident took place in downtown Delray Beach at 10:45 a.m. The collision occurred after the fire truck, with its lights flashing, bypassed rail crossing arms and entered the path of the oncoming train following the clearance of another train.
The crash left the Brightline train immobilized on the tracks, significantly damaged at the front, while the Delray Beach Fire Rescue truck suffered its ladder being torn off, landing several yards away in the grass. The severity of the impact was evident as emergency services rushed to the scene to attend to the injured individuals and assess the situation.
As a result of the collision, three firefighters from Delray Beach Fire Rescue were hospitalized but reported to be in stable condition. Additionally, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue transported 12 train passengers to the hospital for minor injuries sustained during the unexpected and harrowing event.
The person familiar with the details of the crash, who was not authorized to disclose what happened because of the ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fire truck stopped at the crossing and waited for a freight train to go by before maneuvering around the lowered crossing arms.
Video of the collision shows the fire truck driving around cars stopped at the crossing with its lights flashing to cross the double tracks.
Emmanuel Amaral rushed to the scene on his golf cart after hearing a loud crash and screeching train brakes from where he was having breakfast a couple of blocks away. He saw firefighters climbing out of the front window of their damaged truck and pulling injured colleagues away from the tracks. One of their helmets came to rest several hundred feet away from the crash.
“The front of that train is completely smashed, and there was even some of the parts to the fire truck stuck in the front of the train, but it split the car right in half. It split the fire truck right in half, and the debris was everywhere,” Amaral said.
A Brightline safety officer said the entire community is involved in ensuring railroad safety and drivers should never go around closed gates.
The Federal Railroad Administration will investigate. A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board said in the afternoon that it was still gathering information about the crash and had not decided yet whether to investigate.
The NTSB is already investigating two crashes involving Brightline’s high-speed trains that killed three people early this year at the same crossing in Melbourne along the railroad’s route between Miami and Orlando.
More than 100 people have died after being hit by trains since Brightline began operations in July 2017 — giving the railroad the worst death rate in the nation. But most of those deaths have been either suicides, pedestrians who tried to run across the tracks ahead of a train or drivers who went around crossing gates instead of waiting for a train to pass. Brightline has not been found to be at fault in those previous deaths.
Railroad safety has been a concern since a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023, spilling toxic chemicals that caught fire. Regulators urged the industry to improve safety and members of Congress proposed a package of reforms, but railroads have not made many major changes to their operations and the bill has stalled.
Earlier this month the two operators of a Union Pacific train were killed after it collided with a semitrailer truck that was blocking a crossing in the small West Texas town of Pecos. Three other people were injured, and the local Chamber of Commerce building was damaged.
