Emergency vehicles were en route to another emergency in progress on the other runway. Sadly it sounds like a fire truck was cleared to cross the active runway moments before the CRJ landed. By the time the controller realized that mistake it was too late.

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arrowsmith an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Do we know what the other emergency was? All the reporting I've seen has been very vague on this.

	▲	kayodelycaon an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		United aircraft did a high speed abort (80+ knots) and afterwards, fumes from hot brakes were entering the back of the cabin. (Not uncommon.) Source: Mentour Pilot. https://www.youtube.com/live/Bb4CcoK0KLM
	▲	ms7m an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Unrelated United aborted takeoff, as well as reported some odors in the cabin from the flight attendants.

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_moof 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm very, very curious about whether the ARFF crew visually cleared the runway and final before crossing the hold short line. It's standard procedure for flight crew to do this, specifically to mitigate the risk of ATC errors.

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gortok 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reports are there were fog and rain at La Guardia at the time of the incident. They were on a short final, and it’s entirely possible they were not visible to the fire truck’s crew.

	▲	_moof an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I have over 1,000 hours as PIC in the NY area alone, in all seasons and all weather, and I was in the region last night, awake when the accident happened. LGA was reporting 4SM -RA BR FEW045 BKN090 OVC110 at the time of the accident. The weather wasn't anywhere close to what I'd call "bad" here. Sprinkles and some high clouds. I can almost guarantee you the airplane was visible from taxiway D.

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bombcar 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At night with multiple runways it can be very hard to see a plane on final.

Still, I'm always hesitant to cross an active runway.

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cmiles8 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes ARFF should still look before crossing, but the weather wasn’t great with limited visibility and thus even if they looked it’s possible they didn’t see anything.

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PierceJoy 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, isn't it obvious that they didn't?

	▲	wat10000 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s obvious that either they didn’t, or they did but they didn’t see the plane. We don’t know which.