Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

TBO > News

I-4 Reopens; Investigation Continues

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Polk County deputies route traffic away from State Road 559 near Interstate 4 early Thursday because of continued heavy smoke and fog.

By BAIRD HELGESON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 11, 2008

TAMPA - Dense fog rolled in so quickly early Wednesday morning that troopers patrolling Interstate 4 never had time to close the road before a series of crashes that killed four people and injured 38 others, a highway patrol spokesman said.

As investigators try to unravel what happened, the Florida Highway Patrol and officials from the state Department of Transportation said the dense fog blamed in part for the 70-car pileup was a weather anomaly that moved in while troopers were outside the area.

At the same time, a highway patrol spokesman and a state transportation official cast at least part of the blame on motorists who didn't slow as they entered the thick veil of fog and smoke from a nearby brush fire that got out of control.

Troopers have the authority to close a road when they think public safety is in jeopardy. They can set up flares and block the road with their cars if they think the roadway is too treacherous for travel. The highway patrol then calls the Transportation Department to erect signs.

"Procedurally, nothing was done wrong," Trooper Larry Coggins, a highway patrol spokesman, said Thursday.

The series of crashes at 4:35 a.m. halted traffic in both directions on one of the state's busiest roads, near U.S. 27 in Polk County. A 14-mile stretch of interstate was closed for about 36 hours as workers removed the wreckage and then repaved a 650-foot portion of the roadway ruined by the fires that burned after the crashes. The Transportation Department reopened the road Thursday evening.

Authorities haven't released the names of those who died. Walt Disney World officials confirmed that one of the dead was Darren Scott Snyder, a maintenance worker at the Animal Kingdom theme park.

Authorities may not have anticipated the thick mix of smoke and fog, but the National Weather Service had forecast dense fog throughout the preceding evening.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, the day before the crash, the weather service's Ruskin office issued a fog advisory that ranked the danger on a scale of one to 10. Any number higher than six is considered risky for drivers. The forecast for northern Polk was a 10.

The weather service sent out at least three more advisories through the night and into the morning, all warning of dense fog in Polk.

The weather service posts the forecasts on its Web site, broadcasts them over weather radio and sends the alerts to a host of subscribers, including the news media.

Coggins said he didn't know whether the highway patrol receives the alerts.

He said it would be up to individual troopers to monitor weather conditions and decide when to close roads. But it's unreasonable to shut down a road every time fog moves into an area, he said.

Fog often lifts, shifts and reappears quickly. A trooper may encounter dense fog driving one way, and find clear skies when he returns.

Coggins compared the risks of seasonal fog to icy road conditions in colder climates.

"They don't close the roads every time it gets icy," he said.

The two troopers on duty in Polk County that night were told to watch for smoke from the fire that burned nearby, Coggins said.

Tuesday morning, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission workers ignited a controlled burn in part of the Hilochee Wildlife Management Area. The fire set to burn 10 acres of heavy brush jumped fire lines and scorched about 400 acres.

"They were aware of the smoke and patrolled the area for the smoke," Coggins said. "It's foggy every night in Polk County this time of year."

Combination Creates A Killer

Separately, the smoke or the fog might not have been thick enough to prevent drivers from motoring through the area without incident. The combination of the two was the issue, said Mike Akridge, the Transportation Department's deputy state traffic engineer for incident management.

Tuesday afternoon, the Transportation Department put up orange reflective signs east and west of the fire area on I-4 to alert motorists to the dangers of smoke and fog.

Just before the crash, one of the two troopers on duty that night responded to another accident. Coggins said he didn't think the trooper's response to that accident had any bearing on preventing the pileup. The first trooper arrived at the I-4 scene 11 minutes after the first call for help.

Akridge said the trooper who'd left the immediate area could not predict that the fog would materialize so quickly and made the right decision to go to the first accident.

Coggins and Akridge said motorists bear at least some responsibility for not slowing when they entered what many called a wall of fog and smoke.

"In the smoke and the fog, you can't drive in there at freeway speeds, for God's sake," Akridge said from his office in Tallahassee. "At some point, the public has some accountability in this."

The highway patrol has no plans to investigate whether the trooper should have closed the road and probably won't change its policy in dealing with fog, Coggins said.

Memories Of Sunshine Skyway

For longtime residents of the Tampa Bay area, the chain of crashes likely brought back memories of a 54-car pileup on the Sunshine Skyway bridge during dense fog in December 1996. It killed an elderly Ruskin woman and sent dozens to hospitals.

The public lambasted the highway patrol for not checking a fog warning issued three hours earlier. They criticized the Transportation Department for not closing the bridge and doing more to warn motorists.

After the crash, the highway patrol assigned a trooper to the bridge 24 hours a day. A second trooper comes in to assist if poor visibility forces authorities to lower bridge speed to 25 mph.

Tractor-trailer driver Richard Westphal of Hudson, who was involved in the I-4 mayhem, said the highway patrol was not to blame. The smoky fog came in so fast, there was nothing they could do, he said.

On Wednesday morning Westphal, 72, was headed east on I-4 with a load of sand. It was quiet. The traffic was easy. Another driver about 10 minutes ahead of him reported that the road was clear. Then, "all of the sudden, it was lights out," Westphal said. "Imagine someone putting their hand over your eyes and you're going 60 miles an hour."

He quickly braked, and another truck hit him from behind. A car behind him crashed into another truck. "I didn't know what was going on. I just sat there." After a few minutes he got out and was nearly choked by the smoke in the air. The air got so thick so fast, "there was nothing anyone could do," he said.

Reporter Lindsay Peterson contributed to this report. Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at bhelgeson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7668.

Share this:

* To:
Your Name:
Your Email Address:
Personal Message [optional]: