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Patrol Says I-4 Was 1 Trooper Short On Night Of Pileup

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 7, 2008

Updated: 02/07/2008 12:17 am

TALLAHASSEE - An additional trooper should have been patrolling the highways in Polk County when 70 vehicles collided last month on Interstate 4, the Florida Highway Patrol said Wednesday.

But additional staff might not have been able to prevent the massive pileup that took place before dawn on Jan. 9, Col. John Czernis, highway patrol director, told a state Senate panel. Drivers carry at least part of the blame, he said, prompting some senators to question whether current laws guiding traffic behavior are strict enough.

Based on a highway patrol staffing formula from the Northwestern University Traffic Institute, three troopers should have been working that night in Polk County, Czernis said. In reality, only two were covering the county that night.

Vacancies on the force affect staffing levels, he said, adding after the hearing that nearly 190 vacancies are open in the force of about 1,680 officers.

Although extra staffing would have been "helpful" on Jan. 9, Czernis told the Senate Transportation Committee that it might not have prevented or significantly minimized the I-4 accident, unless those troopers happened to be "at the exact right place, at the exact right time."

Czernis spoke about the crash one day after Charles Bronson, secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, cleared state wildlife officials who lost control of the prescribed burn that may have contributed to the I-4 accident, in which five people died.

It remains unknown whether smoke from the fire contributed to the loss of visibility on I-4 that morning, according to highway patrol and agriculture department officials.

The National Weather Service has said that the combination of smoke and fog brought visibility on the highway to nearly zero, but Czernis said Wednesday the department's ongoing homicide investigation into the crashes will shed more light on what happened.

Bronson said unforeseen shifts in the weather, not criminal actions or gross negligence, caused the fire to expand.

Czernis said the Division of Forestry alerted the highway patrol to the weather changes and problems with the burn on the night of Jan. 8. But visibility on the highway remained clear until after 3 a.m.

The prescribed burn should have put the highway patrol on heightened alert, ready with additional staff and resources, said Senate Transportation Committee member Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa. It appears, she said, that the Division of Forestry and the highway patrol need to coordinate better.

"I'd also like to see an increase in the number of highway patrol," she said. "Part of the problem is we don't pay them enough. They get trained by the highway patrol and then they go work for the cities and counties where they can get more pay."

Czernis said drivers contributed to the accident by failing to heed roadside warnings and message boards about road conditions.

Joyner said she is concerned about the current law guiding driver response to bad road conditions. The law requires drivers only to slow down where visibility is poor. Joyner would like to set a speed limit - perhaps 25 miles per hour, she said.

Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, said she, too, thinks the law may need tightening.

"What would have prevented the person behind me from hitting me if they couldn't see that I had slowed down?" she said. "I don't know if that means we need a definitive lower speed limit when visibility is poor, or something that we can flash to tell people to slow down."

Meanwhile, the state continues to install roadway sensors and cameras to keep traffic command stations apprised of conditions, said Kevin Thibault, an assistant secretary at the state Department of Transportation. Tampa already has such technology, but it has yet not reached the site of the Jan. 9 accident. The department, which started the project last year, expects to complete it by 2009.

Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850)222-8382 or cdolinski@tampatrib.com.

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