An MTA bus and an FDNY fire truck collided just after 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Longwood section of the Bronx, injuring 19 people including five firefighters, according to the FDNY. Fourteen people were taken to the hospital, and three more were evaluated at the scene, while the crash briefly snarled one of the South Bronx's busiest commercial corridors.
The collision happened at the intersection of Southern Boulevard and Barretto Street, according to CBS New York, which reported the crash occurred at 12:32 p.m. FDNY officials told the station that all 19 injured people — 14 bus passengers and five firefighters — were transported to local hospitals with minor injuries. News 12 Bronx reported the same injury breakdown, noting the crash unfolded just after 12:30 p.m. in Longwood.
A Corridor With a Recent History of Crashes
This is not the first time an FDNY vehicle has collided with others along Southern Boulevard this year. On July 3, an FDNY fire truck was involved in a separate collision just blocks away at Southern Boulevard and Hunts Point Avenue, injuring two EMS personnel and a civilian, per the same Bronx outlet's earlier report. That crash site sits just south of Barretto Street on the same roadway.
The area has also seen other emergency-vehicle incidents in recent months. In June, an FDNY Engine 82 truck responding to an emergency call box fatally struck a pedestrian near Intervale Avenue and Chisholm Street in the neighboring Morrisania/Longwood area, according to Firehouse Magazine. And on July 31, two MTA buses collided near East 163rd Street and Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx, injuring five passengers, as reported by ABC7 Eyewitness News.
South Bronx Streets Already Flagged as High-Risk
The Longwood crash lands in a neighborhood that already carries one of the city's higher crash burdens. A June report cited by Hoodline found that South Bronx neighborhoods including Longwood, Hunts Point, Melrose and Mott Haven experience serious crash rates of roughly 69.9 per 10,000 residents, well above the citywide average of 47 per 10,000.
Local civic leaders have taken notice of the corridor specifically. Community Board 2, which represents Longwood and Hunts Point, has identified the stretch of Southern Boulevard between Westchester Avenue and 167th Street — including the Barretto Street intersection — as needing upgraded street lighting and traffic infrastructure, according to budget requests published by the City of New York.
What the Law Says About Emergency Vehicle Crashes
Under Section 1104 of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Law, drivers of authorized emergency vehicles responding to a call are granted qualified privileges to run red lights and exceed posted speed limits, provided they operate with due regard for public safety, according to Justia Law records. Those privileges are not absolute: the New York Court of Appeals ruled in the 2011 case Kabir v. County of Monroe, as reported by the New York Law Journal, that a heightened reckless-disregard standard applies specifically to those statutorily privileged maneuvers, while ordinary negligence standards govern other driving conduct. It remains unclear whether the FDNY truck involved in Tuesday's Longwood crash was operating under emergency lights and sirens at the time, a detail that would determine which legal standard applies to any review of the collision.
MTA buses are involved in collisions with some regularity across the city. Legal and transit data reported by AEE Law in February found that MTA buses were involved in 1,872 collisions across New York City in 2023 — averaging roughly five per day — with the bus collision-with-injury rate reaching 7.78 per million vehicle miles in 2024. NYC Transit operates more than 5,700 buses across 322 routes citywide.
Tuesday's crash adds to a string of Bronx roadway incidents Hoodline has covered this summer, including a fatal Jerome Avenue hit-and-run and a separate case in which a Bronx man was struck by an NYPD vehicle. No further details on the cause of Tuesday's collision, or whether any citations were issued, have been released.
