(updated at 8:04 p.m. MT, January 29, 2012)
A mixture of fog and smoke from a vegetation fire caused multiple vehicle crashes and at least nine ten deaths on I-75 in north Florida early Sunday morning. Authorities said all lanes of the Interstate were closed and at least 17 18 people were being treated at hospitals.
The Florida Highway Patrol had closed the highway briefly overnight because of a mixture of fog and smoke from a marsh fire in the nearby Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park south of Gainesville. Troopers checked the visibility and when it cleared they opened the highway. At 3:45 a.m. the crashes occurred, involving at least four to five seven large commercial vehicles and about six twelve passenger vehicles. Three of the vehicles caught fire. The Gainesville Sun has some photos of the incident.
This brings to mind the horrific 70-vehicle pileup on January 9, 2008 on I-4 in Florida in which five people were killed. That one was caused by a mixture of fog and smoke from an escaped prescribed fire.
I can see the future of this one: first, a TV commercial to call 1-800-Bad Smoke&Fog “if you or one of your loved ones were killed or injured in this event.” Then the lawsuits are filed against the Forestry Department (“fail to put out the fire”), the NWS (failure to forecast the fog”), the Hiway Department (“failure to put out message boards”), the Hiway Patrol (“failure to close the hiway”), the car manufacturers (failure to build a crash-proof car”), Frito-Lay Potatoe Chips (“hiring a truck that crashed to haul their chips into Florida”), the cars in front of me (“slowing down too quickly”), the cars behind me (“not slowing down quickly enough”) and NWCG (“not developing fire-fighting tools that would have put the fire out faster and with less smoke”).
Welcome to the brave new world of wildfire litigation.
Wildfire folks just ought to realize what us in aviation have had to put up within the last 30-40 years with allll the lawsuits when aircraft and man go TU and go CFIT without the proper SMS,CRM,SA, and what other acronym u want to throw out there. Wildland fire:……………WELCOME to to real world!!!!! Hehehe