Horrifying footage has shown the moment a Brightline train collided with a fire truck over the weekend, cutting the vehicle in half.

It happened at a railroad crossing in West Palm Beach around 10:45am Saturday, and left 12 passengers with minor injuries.

Three Delray Beach firefighters were injured as well and are currently in stable condition, officials said Monday.

The fire rescue truck that had been carrying the first responders is seen in the new footage from Brightline, which was released along with a written statement.

It warned onlookers to ‘never drive around crossing gates when they are down’, as the video appeared to show the oversized vehicle traversing those obstacles just before the collision.

The clip then cuts off before the moment of impact, which left the speeding train toppled and its front completely destroyed.

The Delray Beach Fire Rescue truck, meanwhile, was thrust dozens of feet away – its ladder completely ripped off and left in the grass at the scene.

An investigation is underway, putting the passenger rail service from Orlando to Miami under federal scrutiny. The company was founded in 2012 by Wes Edens, the billionaire part-owner of both the Milwaukee Bucks and Aston Villa FC.

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‘Railroad safety is a community wide effort,’ the company said in a post accompanying the video footage, filmed from the front car of the ill-fated train.

‘For everyone’s safety, never drive around crossing gates when they are down.’

Brightline officials didn’t immediately respond to an email asking for more information Monday morning, after service at the station in crowded downtown Delray Beach resumed as normal after several hours.  

Authorities, meanwhile, did not confirm the cause of the crash – with the only clue provided seemingly the footage itself.

It clearly shows the truck driving around the protective barriers, just a few feet away from crossing safely.

Just last year, the train was named the fastest in Florida and all of the Southeastern United States – after reaching speeds of 130 mph. 

It bills itself on its website as the only ‘modern, eco-friendly, intercity rail’ in the entire US – a reputation that helped it secure some $3billion in federal funding from the Biden Administration this time last year.

The company itself is worth close to $1billion, and is in the midst of a project promised to provide Americans with a high-speed bullet train route meant to traverse the notorious Nevada desert, from LA to Las Vegas, in a matter of hours.

Meanwhile, more than 100 people have died after being hit by Brightline trains since July 2017 – the worst rate in the nation. 

Brightline, though, has not been found to be at fault for any of those incidents,  most of which have been suicides and pedestrians attempting to cross the tracks at the last-minute. 

Motorists going around gates instead of waiting for a train to pass was also pegged as a primary factor, with three of these crashes under federal investigation.

This includes the incident at the crossing on East Atlantic Avenue and SE 1st Avenue, where the fire truck was hit. DailyMail.com has reached out to Delray Beach Fire Rescue for more information.

The department, as of writing, has kept quiet as to why the truck seemingly strayed from a safe route when crossing at the intersection. 

Emmanuel Amaral, a local, told NBC 6 how he rushed to the scene after hearing the crash and screeching train brakes from several blocks away.

Once he got there, he was met with the sight of several firefighters climbing out of the window of the damaged truck. He recalled how he saw many of the men pulling their injured colleagues away from the tracks.

‘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,’ Amaral said. ‘It split the fire truck right in half, and the debris was everywhere.’

Zach Thrasher, an Orlando resident who was actually aboard the train, further told CBS 12 of what he and other riders experienced: ‘We felt a hard brake and then an immediate violent impact. I was thrown into the table. There was a lot of momentum.

‘We saw a cargo train go by first on our right side and pretty much within a second after that we felt what we thought was maybe an initial brake, but it was immediately before the impact basically,’ he continued.

‘We knew we hit something, we knew we hit something significant. We thought initially it was a car. 

‘We had no idea it was a fire truck until a few minutes later, like after the fact and you could see some of the debris.’

He went on to reveal how he and his family, who had been headed home from a holiday cruise excursion, were seated in the passenger car at the very tail end of the Brightline train.

As a result, no members of his family were seriously injured, he said – before going on to recall how that was not the case for several of his fellow passengers. 

‘What was the explanation that was given over the loudspeaker on the train?’ a reporter asked Thrasher, who said that after the crash, Brightline staffers asked those on the train with any medical training to assist those who had hurt.

‘Mainly just you know there was an incident, we collided with another vehicle, please keep the aisles clear, please stay in your seat,’ he recalled. ‘If you need assistance let us know. Unfortunately they seemed like they’d been through it before.’

He went on to offer his theory for what caused the crash – after confirming that  the crossing arms had been down where the fire truck attempted to cross.

‘I know the crossing arms were down. We saw they were still down, you know, after the fact,’ Thrasher explained, his account seemingly stood up by Brookline’s statement and video footage. 

‘I think the fire truck believed the cargo train was the only train,’ he added, referencing how a fire truck had stopped at the crossing to wait for a freight train to go by just before the crash.

A person familiar with the details of the crash but not authorized to disclose what happened because of the ongoing investigation aired similar sentiments to the Associated Press Sunday, on condition of anonymity.

The insider said the fire truck had stopped at the crossing and waited for the freight train to go by before maneuvering around the lowered crossing arms.

That’s when the footage from the passenger train cuts in -after  the fire truck saw the cargo train go through the railroad crossing, seemingly under the impression no other trains were coming.

‘They tried to cross, and didn’t see us,’ Thrasher said Saturday, still visibly traumatized by the incident. ‘And we collided basically.’ 

The city of Delray Beach, moreover, has said it will refrain from releasing any information until the investigation is completed, after the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that it would be jumping in to aid the city Sunday.

The decision came following some speculation as to whether the federal agency would be involved, after officials on Saturday said they were looking into the circumstances of the crash to discern whether it was necessary. 

Other probes from the agency include two called at the start of the year – which collectively saw three people killed at the same railroad crossing in Melbourne in a matter of days.

The crashes happened on a Wednesday and Friday in January, with the first claiming the life of 62-year-old Charles Julian Phillips, who was killed when his car was hit by the then oncoming train. 

Three passengers in that vehicle were injured, according to Melbourne police – Mayor Paul Alfrey told reporters at the scene that the SUV tried to outrun the train.

Two days later, another crash killed driver Lisa Ann Batchelder, 52, and passenger Michael Anthony Degasperi, 54, both of Melbourne.

Both investigations – as is the case with the one called Sunday – are still underway. The names of the 15 victims have not yet been released.