Three Delray Beach, Florida firefighters and a dozen commuters were injured on Saturday after a fire truck drove around the crossing gates and got freaking smacked by a northbound Brightline Train they didn’t see coming, the Associated Press reports on a five year-old boy’s playtime coming to life.
The fire crew had waited for a southbound freight train to pass through the double-tracked crossing at SE 1st St at about 10:45 AM on Saturday, but did not wait another few seconds for the gates to come up. Which was kind of stupid, because they didn’t see the Brightliner coming to rock their world. The ladder truck was completely ripped in half and it was Palm Beach County Fire Rescue that had to respond to Delray FD’s fuckup. It’s not clear what incident the Delray crew had been on their way to respond to. They might’ve even been on the way back to their house to play Xbox, walk the dalmatian, or print more flyers for a large kegger/pig roast to be held this evening.
“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,” said local man Emmanuel Amaral, who the AP’s article describes as having “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.” Meaning a golf cart guy showed up to the scene to do little or nothing to help the firefighters who got themselves blasted by a train.