A high speed passenger train crashed Saturday into a fire truck, pushing it onto its side, leaving at least three firefighters and multiple train passengers injured, authorities said.
The crash happened in crowded downtown Delray Beach, multiple news outlets reported. The Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front destroyed about a block away from the fire truck while the truck’s ladder was ripped off and strewn in the grass several yards away, The Sun-Sentinel reported.
The Delray Beach Fire Rescue said in a social media post that three Delray Beach firefighters were in stable condition at a hospital. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue took 12 people from the train to the hospital with minor injuries.
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 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.
WPTV
“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.
Authorities could not immediately say what caused the crash or where the fire truck was heading.
Brightline officials didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry Saturday afternoon.
A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board said that the agency is still gathering information about Saturday’s Brightline crash and hasn’t decided yet whether it will investigate.
The NTSB is already investigating two crashes involving Brightline’s high speed trains that killed three people at the same crossing early this year 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 the train or drivers who went around crossing gates instead of waiting for a train to pass. Brightline hasn’t 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 haven’t made many major changes to their operations and the bill has stalled.
