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15 hurt in Florida when train hits fire truck that drove onto tracks after another train passed​




Three firefighters and a dozen passengers were injured in Florida on Saturday when a fire truck with its lights flashing drove around rail crossing arms and into the path of a high-speed passenger train after waiting for another train to pass, according to video of the incident and a person briefed on what happened.

The crash happened at 10:45 a.m. in crowded downtown Delray Beach. In the aftermath the Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front destroyed, about a block away from the Delray Beach Fire Rescue truck. Its ladder was ripped off and 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.

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. ___

Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, Chevel Johnson in New Orleans and Julie Walker in New York contributed.

 

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Florida Is Debuting a New Material for Building Roads. There’s Just One Problem: It’s Radioactive
The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a private company the green light to use phosphogypsum, a radioactive byproduct of fertilizer, in road construction.
When phosphogypsum decays, it forms radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer.

Using radioactive material to build roads in Florida. Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency approved the request of Mosaic, the largest phosphate producer in the U.S., to carry out a small-scale pilot project using various mixtures of phosphogypsum as a road base. The company plans to create four sections of test road with the phosphogypsum road base at its New Wales facility in Polk County.


 

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Man admits to setting fires at predominantly Black church in Rhode Island​



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Prosecutors said Kevin Colantonio set several fires around the exterior of the Shiloh Gospel Temple early February 11 in North Providence after purchasing a lighter and gasoline.

The building was vacant at the time and the fires were quickly extinguished by members of the North Providence Police and Fire departments, investigators said. The fires caused property damage.

A lawyer representing Colantonio declined to comment.

Without the quick action of first responders who arrived at the church at about 12:12 a.m. following reports of an individual trying to set fires, the damage to the house of worship


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United passenger ‘banned’ from airline after peeing on another flyer: ‘Soaked from his stomach down’​


This plane passenger pissed off a lot of people.

United Airlines has banned a man from flying on their aircraft for allegedly urinating on another passenger.

Jerome Gutierrez was traveling in business class on UA Flight 189 from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Manila, Philippines, on Dec. 27 when a man got up from his seat about four hours into the flight and began peeing on him, his stepdaughter said.

Jerome Gutierrez was traveling in business class on UA Flight 189 from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Manila, Philippines. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Jerome Gutierrez was traveling in business class on UA Flight 189 from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Manila, Philippines. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“He was asleep and buckled in and was surprised when he looked at the man and thought he was dreaming,” Nicole Cornell, Gutierrez’s stepdaughter, told SFGATE.

After the pee perp finished his business, “Jerome realized he was soaked from his stomach down [to his feet] in that man’s urine.”

The Bay Area resident remained sitting in his “soaked” clothes for eight more hours after the incident.

United Airlines flight attendants asked Gutierrez “not to approach the man in fear that there would be a confrontation and he would become violent,” Cornell shared.

“They put the needs of the airline before my stepdad‘s health,” Cornell exclaimed. “I am so disgusted and in shock with how United Airlines handled this! That is a biohazard, and the plane should’ve turned around to address this issue.”

She added that the man who urinated on her stepfather apologized and begged him “not to press charges.”

A spokesperson for United Airlines confirmed to The Post that there was “a passenger disturbance” on the flight in question and that the passenger had been “banned.”

“On December 28 we asked police to meet our flight when it arrived in Manila to address a passenger disturbance. We have banned this passenger,” they said.

 

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Sandy dealership responds after angry customer crashes car through showroom​

Heartstopping video shows an enraged driver crashing right into a car dealership. Tyler Slade is a manager at the Mazda dealership in Sandy, Utah. Slade says the driver had purchased a used Subaru Outback for $4,000 earlier in the day. Several hours later, the manager says the driver was very emotional and he wanted his money back. Slade says the driver got so worked up he got back in the car and hit the gas.





:lol:

 

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