More than a dozen people are recovering after an MTA city bus and an FDNY fire truck collided on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. The crash sent a total of nineteen people to the hospital and left the neighborhood shaken by the force of the impact between the two large vehicles on a busy city road.
Surveillance video captured the moment of the collision. The footage shows the bus traveling down Southern Boulevard when the fire truck slammed into it, the two vehicles meeting in a crash that witnesses described as enormous and extremely loud.
Emergency medical crews took five firefighters and fourteen bus riders to the hospital in the aftermath. Officials have not released the conditions of those who were taken for treatment, leaving the severity of the injuries unclear in the immediate hours after the crash.
According to witnesses at the scene, the bus had the green light and was traveling its correct route when the collision happened. One witness said the fire truck had no sirens and no lights on as it went through the red light, meaning there was no audible warning of its approach.
That absence of any warning, the witness said, left the bus driver with almost no time to react. With no noise and no flashing lights to signal the fire truck coming, the bus had no chance to see it or to stop before the two vehicles hit with a heavy, jarring force.
The crash could easily have caught even more people. One woman who says she rides that bus all the time explained that she happened to decide to walk instead on the day of the collision, sparing herself from being aboard when the fire truck struck.
For now, key questions remain unanswered, including the current conditions of the injured firefighters and passengers and the precise circumstances that put a fire truck into the intersection against the light. As the people hurt in the crash recover, the surveillance footage of the impact stands as a stark record of how suddenly the collision unfolded on a Bronx street.