The Morbid Reason Floridians Are Thanking A Train For Keeping Them Safe This Hurricane Season
It's become a local joke, but it's definitely not in good taste.
frantic00 | Shutterstock According to the National Hurricane Center, the Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June 1 to November 30. Reflecting on hurricane seasons past, one state tends to stand out in everyone’s minds: Florida. The way the state juts out into the Atlantic Ocean makes it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms, and Florida has seen some of the worst weather that the Atlantic has to offer over the years.
But, surprisingly, the state didn’t get hit by a single hurricane in 2025. Instead of thanking Mother Nature or the Universe or whatever you believe in for this good fortune, Floridians are attributing their safety to something much more sinister and macabre.
If you ask a Floridian, they’ll tell you that the state was kept safe during hurricane season because of a train.
According to Kaitlyn Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic, there is a train that stretches between Miami and Orlando called the Brightline. It “is only the second high-speed train in the United States and the first outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak operates the Acela.” The Brightline began operating in December 2017 and carries 250,000 passengers each month.
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So, what exactly is the problem? Well, the Brightline has a terrible habit of striking pedestrians — a lot of them. Tiffany reported that the Federal Railroad Administration said the train has caused a minimum of 185 deaths. 148 of those deaths were determined to definitely not be suicides. The train killed 41 people last year alone.
Floridians credit the Brightline’s horrible record of causing deaths as the reason hurricanes have been staying away from the state. Tiffany said that residents jokingly call it the “Death Train” and say that it has to be “fed” to keep the storms at bay.
The ‘Death Train’ may be a joke to locals, but it’s definitely not funny to the families it has affected.
One verified Instagram account is known as @brightlinecrashtracker. In its bio, it's described as “just a guy tracking his favorite train.” It’s unclear who said guy is, but he posts an update every time someone is struck by the train. “Brightline [expletive] hit another person,” he announces in every post. In a post from November 10, he said, “Our friendly neighborhood train has been fed. It’s going to be a good week, y’all.”
Meanwhile, Tiffany spoke to Maria Furtado, whose 49-year-old niece Joann DePina passed away after being hit by the Brightline in January. DePina was using a “well-worn footpath” to cross the tracks to get from her sober-living house to a group meeting. She was a mother of two and had been saving money for her own apartment. Some may be joking about the thought of the train being “fed,” but family members like Furtado aren’t laughing.
It seems like the ‘Death Train’ actually has no connection to whether hurricanes make landfall or not.
Writing for Florida Today, C.A. Bridges reported that this is far from the first year Florida hasn’t seen any hurricanes, and there hasn’t been a miraculous drop in hurricanes since the train started up in 2017. Apparently, from 2006 to 2015, a single hurricane didn’t make landfall in Florida. This nine-year stretch was the longest since hurricane tracking began in 1851.
Pixabay | Pexels
Including those nine years, there have been a total of 34 years since 1851 when Florida didn’t experience a hurricane. Also according to Bridges, there were actual meteorological reasons that no hurricane made landfall in Florida this year, from a North Atlantic high, to wind shear, to the Fujiwhara effect, in which different storms basically get in each other’s way.
So, while the local urban legend may be that the Brightline is somehow keeping Floridians safe by taking the lives of those who are necessary to “feed” it, there’s no reason to believe that the train has anything to do with what happens during hurricane season. What’s more, suggesting that people’s heartbreaking deaths at the hands of a train are somehow humorous or serve a greater purpose is downright disturbing and disrespectful.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
