What about the freaking pair of ~1000-watt landing lights, two on each wing?
Here’s a picture of the wrecked fire truck.
From Googling what an ARFF truck looks like, seems to match to me.
Couple thoughts …
The aircraft speed looks to me like 80-90 knots. It really yeeted the truck down the runway when they collided, and those trucks are not light.
The look angle down the runway for the truck would have been over the right-seater’s right shoulder. Easy to quickly look as far back as you can, which turns out to be too quick and not too far. The driver’s ability to see back along the runway centerline is probably pretty limited.
One of the JFK runway incursions involving two jets was similar; the jet crossing the runway had to look waay over the copilot’s right shoulder to have line of sight to the runway. And do it fairly early in the crossing.
As to bright landing lights. From where the fire truck was, the background looking towards the approach end of the runway is a freeway full of car headlights, a couple of hotels, and a bunch or older urban housing and businesses. Many of which are lit with plain white lights.
Stopping & looking would probably have slowed things down enough the airplane would have been seen as a distinct set of moving lights among the stationary lights. But a quick look in that direction has lots of ways to look without seeing well enough to decode all the data available in that scene.
None of which excuses the accident. All of which goes some way to explaining why/how it occurred.
Airline airports should never be single-manned in the control tower. LGA & DCA should be restricted to turboprops only. etc. A system with built-in high levels of risks will have built-in failures. Want to reduce the failures? Remove the built-in high risks.
And now for something else.
Here in SoFl at about 2pm today = Mon a Robinson R-44 fell out of the sky & impacted on a warehouse roof, apparently killing the two people aboard the helo.
Here’s a basic cite, and Google News for “Boynton Beach Helicopter Crash” can get you more.
For the Colombian military crash I mentioned a few post ago, the paywalled New York Times says:
A Colombian military aircraft transporting 128 troops and crew members crashed shortly after taking off from southern Colombia on Monday morning, killing 66 people and injuring dozens of others, Colombian military officials said at a briefing.
The dead included 58 members of the military, six members of the air force and two police officers, according to defense ministry officials. Four people were still unaccounted for.
Colombian Military Plane Crash Kills 66 and Injures Dozens
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/world/americas/colombian-military-crash.html
The names of the two Air Canada pilots have been released.
The captain was Antoine Forest, an avid outdoorsman from a small town in Quebec who loved hiking, kayaking, sailing and climbing. The FO was Mackenzie Gunther about whom there is less information. Their ages were not given but the article has a picture of Forest, and both were described elsewhere as young men just at the start of their careers.
Quebec resident among 2 pilots killed in crash at New York’s LaGuardia airport | CBC News
I must admit that though I initially lashed out at the controller responsible, I rather suspect that the investigation will find that federal government incompetence in the way that ATC is staffed, especially in the era of Trump and DOGE, and the way in general that some airports are managed, are at least contributing factors.
Something I learned a long time ago applies to cars, motorcycles and planes. Watch for oncoming traffic. It means angling the vehicle so you can see. Before I enter a runway I would turn the plane (applies mostly to small planes) so that I can see the traffic from both sides of the runway in case someone is lazy and uses a non-standard approach (right base vs left base). I learned this by surviving such an event. The idiot didn’t make a call in the pattern making it worse.
This is one of those untaught rules in life. In applies to many situations. I try to teach people that it doesn’t make a good headstone to have “I had the right-of-way” engraved on it. I live near a 2 way stop that routinely has accidents because someone drives through a stop sign. I slow to a stop when I have the right away and look. It kept me from getting T-boned by of all things, a police car.
What hasn’t been mentioned is that ground communication is a separate frequency. The area between the tarmac and the runway is handled by ground. If things are slow they may put you on the tower frequency directly. So there is a communication transition that is separated out as a vehicle moves to/from the active runway. In the case of this accident the Tower was controlling the fire truck to clear it across the active runway.
The pilot’s response of just braking hard and not doing any wild evasive maneuvers (such as hopping or veering hard right) probably saved lives.
This might be a trivial thing to ask under the circumstances, but has there ever been another aircraft accident where the flight crew were the only fatalities?
ETA: Not counting cargo flights, where the flight crew are the only souls on board.
The only one that came to mind was the Aloha flight many years ago where one cabin crew was killed as a result of an explosive decompression.
Did you read what you quoted? Your own photo helps prove my point. IF the ARFF driver looked back those lights are very close together when the plane is ½ mile down the runway; it’s quite possible that something blocked his vision, perhaps a mike cable, perhaps some equipment, or possibly even the B-pillar.
As LSLGuy stated after your post there was a sea of lights, trying to pick out one that is moving towards you (rather than across your field of view); especially if you have a partially obstructed view is nigh on impossible.
It’s a little hard to tell which model that is from the above picture of it but the crashed truck is #35, I did see a separate photo of ARFF 34; on the assumption that the are the same model, it can hold at least 3,000 gal of water, which weighs 25,000 lbs alone, & that’s before you add the weight of the rolling container that moves it.
Oh yes, the 737 Cabriolet.
I think so too. veering would have struck the wings and torn open the fuel tanks.
I’m wondering if the flight attendant was jump-seating in the cockpit or the damage breached the bulkhead. she traveled 100 meters out of the plane.
Pretty sure that was a targa.
The NY Times (I think it was) reported she was in the cabin, not the cockpit.
Also, that could have turned the CRJ into a tumbling fireball, and might have sent it into other aircraft on either of the adjacent taxiways.
Based on my rough measurement, half a mile would be roughly the distance between the touchdown zone and the Delta taxiway. If so, and the CRJ was just landing, assuming an average speed between touchdown and reaching the fire truck at Delta of 90 knots, and generously reducing the amount of runway traversed to 2000 ft, it would have taken it at least 13 seconds to get to where the fire truck was, getting rapidly closer with four powerful blazing landing lights. Which, though they may not have been highly visible against background when it was ½ mile away, would surely have been bright as the sun as it got closer.
Something about this does not compute. How long does it take a fire truck to cross a runway? How long to get the hell out of the way if anyone is paying any attention at all?
Can I get what’s behind door #3, Monty? Her flight was there on time, but…
The list of things that I’ve done on a runway is rather lengthy & includes, but not limited to:
- Takeoff
- Landing
- Driving (my own or others vehicles, passengering, too)
- Pulling an aircraft (maybe pushing, too; I don’t remember that part of it; there are photos of the pulling)
- Photography, both of the runway (a foggy centerline is cool!), runway lights, & of other things, too.
- Sitting
- Standing
- Walking
- Running (racing, multiple airports)
- Segwaying
- Eating & drinking
- Shopping (in person, not online)
- Watched (multiple) concerts
- Playing football
Okay, so most of those things were on a closed runway but then there was crossing of an active one (& back) on foot. (GA, non-towered airport, nothing coming, & I didn’t feel like driving a couple of miles around to the other side to check out the moored blimps up close & personal)
Last night she got one that I don’t have - (Air stairs) evacuation from the plane, with ARFF trucks standing by! 
So she boarded on time but didn’t end up making it home, either.
Ever drive down the road & come across a traffic cop; maybe they tell you to stop on a green, or go on a red, or (gasp!) turn left despite the road signage stating that’s illegal because the road ahead is closed for some emergency? Truck 1 (& company) were given clearance to cross, not seeing a light you were not looking for, either because of confirmation bias, not picking it out in the sea of lights (have you ever been in the front seat of a plane {maybe a Cessna} at night on a runway? - Hint: it’s kind of like a sea of cones in a parking lot driving course. One can see way more lights/cones than just those that matter to them in their lane), or because something in your field of view blocked it. Also remember, this was an emergency vehicle with lights flashing, which is also going to impacts what you can see as the near field is alternating bright & dark.
FTR, I’m not arguing with you. Just trying to understand how this could have happened even with the truck having been given clearance. I’ll certainly be very interested in the preliminary report.
Just in case it’s helpful info for anyone: according to the NY Times, Houston’s airport is the one major one with significant delays today (tomorrow it will likely be somewhere else).