(Delray Beach) A high-speed passenger train collided with a fire truck at a railroad crossing Saturday morning in Florida, injuring three firefighters and at least a dozen passengers on the train, authorities said.
Published yesterday at 5:20 p.m.
The accident occurred at 10:45 a.m. in crowded downtown Delray Beach, several media outlets reported. The Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front end destroyed, about a block from the Delray Beach fire truck, its ladder torn off and scattered in the grass several feet away, The Sun-Sentinel reported.
The Delray Beach Fire Department said in a social media post that three Delray Beach firefighters were in stable condition at a hospital. Palm Beach County firefighters 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 eating breakfast a few blocks away. He saw firefighters climb out of the window of their damaged truck and move their injured colleagues away from the tracks. One of their helmets came to rest several hundred meters from the accident site.
“The front of this train is completely shattered, and there were even parts of the fire truck stuck in the front of the train, but it split the car in two. It split the fire truck in two and debris was everywhere,” Amaral said.
Brightline officials did not immediately comment on the accident.
A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was still gathering information about the crash and had not yet decided whether it would investigate.
The NTSB is already investigating two crashes involving Brightline high-speed trains that killed three people earlier this year at the same crossing along the Miami-Orlando rail line. More than 100 people have died after being struck by trains since Brightline began operations in July 2017, giving the railroad the worst death rate in the country.
But most of these deaths are either suicides, pedestrians who tried to run across the tracks in front of a train, or drivers who went around crossing barriers instead of waiting for a train to pass. Brightline has not been found responsible for these previous deaths.
Rail 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 have urged the industry to improve safety and members of Congress have proposed a package of reforms, but the 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 tractor-trailer blocking a railroad crossing in the small town of Pecos, West Texas. Three other people were injured and the local chamber of commerce building was damaged.
