Lawmaker: Too Few Troopers For Safety

TAMPA - The night before the deadly Polk County crash on Interstate 4, the two highway patrol troopers working the overnight shift knew to look out for smoke and fog that could make travel dangerous.

Despite the risk, the troopers still had to respond to calls across a county larger than Delaware.

In the hours before Wednesday's crash, one trooper responded to a wreck in which vehicles hit several cows. The other was called to an accident on U.S. 27. He was specifically assigned on the lookout for fog and smoke from a nearby wildfire.

Now a Florida lawmaker is blaming the magnitude of the chain-reaction crash on the lack of patrol enforcement in the area. She said two troopers are not enough to adequately cover a 2,000-square-mile county and be solely responsible for closing roads if conditions become treacherous.

"I believe it could have been prevented," said state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-Lake Worth. "Those people didn't have to die."

The series of crashes around 4:35 a.m. killed four people and injured 38 others on I-4 near U.S. 27. Authorities closed a 14-mile stretch of the interstate for about 36 hours as workers removed the wreckage and repaved a 650-foot portion of the road melted by fires.

The Florida Highway Patrol said staffing levels had nothing to do with the crash. Trooper Larry Coggins said the first trooper was on the scene 11 minutes after the first call.

The patrol blamed the crash on a rare mix of seasonal fog and smoke from a controlled burn in part of the Hilochee Wildlife Management Area that jumped fire lines and torched 400 acres. The wall of fog and smoke covered the interstate quickly, while the troopers were outside the area.

Brandenburg doesn't buy that more staffing wouldn't have helped.

Extra troopers would have allowed authorities to close the road more quickly, if not before the first collisions, then soon after.

"If they had closed the road sooner, the cars wouldn't have kept driving into cars they couldn't see," said Brandenburg, who unsuccessfully tried to block the Legislature's decision to cut 50 trooper positions last year.

Lawmakers and law enforcement officials long have battled over highway patrol staffing levels. Florida has about 1,600 troopers and 150 vacancies. Ten years ago, the patrol had 1,740 troopers.

Patrol Shrinks As Population Rises

Ron Grimming, the highway patrol's director from 1993 to 1997, said that in some areas of Florida it's common for one trooper to cover two or three counties during the overnight shift. Crash victims in those areas can wait more than an hour for help.

"The staffing levels have not kept pace with the population growth and in the increase in roadways," said Grimming, who is running for Highlands County sheriff.

A study he commissioned while leading the department found that Florida needed to add 500 troopers to keep pace with the state's growth. He failed to secure the extra manpower. At the time, Florida had the lowest number of troopers per capita among the nation's 10 largest cities.

"I don't think the situation is different today," he said.

Brandenberg, who sits on the House policy and budget committee, said she will talk to the committee chair about hiring more troopers and increasing pay. Troopers generally earn $8,000 to $15,000 less than police officers and sheriff's deputies.

The state patrol has become a training ground for those looking to get law enforcement experience before jumping to more lucrative city or county agencies, Brandenberg said.

"We need to raise the salaries statewide to make the highway patrol more attractive," she said.

Brandenberg acknowledged that could be a tough sell in Tallahassee. Lawmakers are expected to cut more than $2 billion from the budget in the coming session.

State Sen. Charles Dean, R-Inverness, doesn't think a few more troopers on the road would have prevented Wednesday's catastrophe.

"If you had 10 troopers out there, it wouldn't have mattered," said Dean, a retired sheriff of Citrus County.

The highway patrol wasn't the only law enforcement agency in the area that night. Polk County sheriff's deputies were patrolling the area at the time of the pileup.

Donna Wood, a spokeswoman for the Polk County sheriff's office, would not disclose how many deputies were working at the time of the crash. The sheriff's office has 1,700 employees, including 590 in the department of law enforcement.

Wood said she didn't know whether the two agencies communicated about the smoke and fog the night of the crash, or whether there was any discussion about closing roads.

Tuesday afternoon, the day before the crash, the National Weather Service began issuing advisories warning of dense fog overnight in northern Polk County.

Around the same time, the state Department of Transportation put up signs in both directions of I-4 warning of smoke and fog.

Protocol Differs Across Country

Florida troopers have the authority to close a road when they think public safety is in jeopardy. They generally set up flares and block the road with their cars if they think the road is too treacherous. The Transportation Department will erect signs if the closure is long-term.

Across the nation, it's common for a highway patrol trooper to have the sole authority to close a road. In some of the more fog-prone states, however, they rarely do for fog.

Cape Disappointment, Wash., has the distinction of being the foggiest place in the nation, with an average of 106 heavy fog days per year, according to a 1997 study by the University of South Florida. Tampa Bay has about 22 heavy fog days a year.

Washington State Patrol Lt. Clint Casebolt said he couldn't recall a time when the patrol closed a road because of fog.

"Heavy fog is just a way of life here," he said. "Everybody knows to just slow down."

In California, the highway patrol will offer trooper escorts during foggy conditions to ensure motorists travel at a safe and consistent speed. Occasionally, the troopers will close a road if conditions turn perilous.

"The problem is that fog is really patchy, and it's hard to predict where it is and where it is going," said Tom Marshall, a spokesman with the California patrol. "Ultimately, the onerous falls to the driver to operate the vehicle safely."