Dozens of Long Island Rail Road trains were delayed Tuesday morning after a drunk driver crashed on the tracks and his vehicle burst into flames, police said.
Jorge Ferrer Hidalgo, a 29-year-old Port Washington man, crashed near the Farmingdale LIRR station at around 1:15 a.m., the Nassau County Police Department said in an alert.
Cops responded to find Hidalgo’s white Subaru on fire on the tracks, however he escaped without injures.
Hidalgo was arrested without incident and charged with three counts of driving while intoxicated, police said. His arraignment was scheduled for later on Tuesday in Hempstead.
LIRR service was partially suspended on the Ronkonkoma branch in the early morning hours as first responders extinguished the flames and removed Hidalgo’s damaged car from the train tracks. The fire was doused around 3 a.m., News 12 Long Island reported.
Service eventually resumed with residual delays between 15 and 80 minutes lasting throughout the morning, but normal service had resumed by the afternoon, according to the MTA.
The same LIRR branch had issues last week when a train struck a car that had stalled on the tracks near Farmingdale. The occupants of the car escaped before the impact, but three train passengers were injured.
