While traffic investigators continue to pour through the evidence following Thursday mornings wrecks along I-95 in Volusia County, a meeting is being planned to discuss how to create better interagency communication.

Five wrecks along I-95 near Edgewater in Volusia County around 1:30 a.m. resulted in three death and nine injuries early Thursday. Eight of the injured were transported to local hospitals, including a 9-year-old boy who was flown to Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital. 

“We actually brought in support troopers from our flare team from West Palm (Beach) and Jacksonville because we haven’t had to deal with this large of a scene before,” said Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Kim Montes. 

Following extensive documentation of the wrecks Thursday, investigators met again to start to determine the chain of events, like driver error, and conduct witness interviews.

Montees said visibility dropped to practically zero as fog mixed with smoke in the overnight hours in a phenomenon that meteorologist describe as “super fog.” The smoke is believed to have come from a nearby prescribed burn that happened earlier in the day on Wednesday.

Better communication

Montes said another part of the process in reviewing the deadly crashes is to talk with the Florida Department of Transportation and the Florida Forest Service to review channels of communication.

In 2013, the three agencies signed an agreement called the Highway Safety Smoke Management Interagency Agreement. In describing responsibilities, it states that:

“FFS will notify FHP whenever FFS has knowledge that smoke may impact traffic on the state highway system. The information supplied by FFS will include the FFS contact person, state road number, the location of the hazard (which should include visible landmarks, e.g. ‘south of toll plaza X’ or ‘north of mile marker Y’) and a general description of the incident.”

Montes said while it’s not explicitly stated in the 2013 document, the way that notification has been communicated has been through a phone call. But she said no such call was made on Wednesday, either prior to or following the prescribed burn.

“They gave us a latitude and longitude," she said. "They need to tell us which state roads it’s near. They need to give us markers, mile markers. They need to give us exact locations. We did not receive any of that.

"All we got was a burn notification that had a list of burn notifications and per the agreements that were done in 2013, that is not how we’ve been doing business since.”

A representative of the Florida Forest Service declined an interview request on Friday, but a spokesperson said in a statement that according to forecasts for that part of Volusia County, the National Weather Service in Melbourne stated that “Fog is not expected,” both in its 3:53 a.m. and 1:51 p.m. Fire Weather Forecasts.

NWS Melbourne later issued a dense fog advisory for smoke and fog, but not until after the wrecks occurred. 

A timeline released by FFS also indicated that they believed the winds present during the day and evening on Wednesday would carry any smoke away from the interstate.

The spokesperson told Spectrum News 13 that “there was no concern for issuing the (burn) permit and no potential impacts to the roadway were anticipated” and therefore, they didn’t call FHP.

“We are working closely with our valued partners with Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Transportation and are anticipating getting together in the very near future where we can work out any question or concerns they may have and how we can continue to serve the residents and visitors to our great state,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Montes said because people retire and change positions, it’s important that the agencies periodically get together to review notification policies like this. She said it will be up to leadership to determine whether a new memorandum of understanding is needed, an amendment to the current document is warranted or they just need to better enforce what’s already on the books.

“The communication has to be there so that we can do the best we can to make sure that if there’s a problem on the road, we can get that shut down,” Montes said.

Spectrum News 13 reached out to NWS Melbourne regarding the development of fog that was not in their stated forecasts, but did not receive a response on Friday. Below is the timeline of events regarding the prescribed burn that happened 1.25 miles west southwest of the intersection of I-95 and SR442, according to FFS:

• 7:15 a.m. — The Florida Forest Service issued a burn authorization to Mike Green of Miami Corp. The 161-acre prescribed burn was located on their property for the purposes of ecological and silvicultural purposes.
• 10:00 a.m. — The Florida Forest Service sent an email to notify cooperators of all burn authorizations for the day, including Volusia County Fire and Florida Highway Patrol. The email notification includes the location of burns, who owns the property and the certified burner’s information.
• 10:15 a.m. — Certified burner started the burn.
• 2 p.m. — The prescribed fire was completed.
• 5 p.m. — According to the certified burner, there was light haze over the prescribed burn area and no smoke columns were visualized at that time.
• 9 p.m. — According to Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), a phone call was received at the FHP dispatch center where a caller indicated that they could smell smoke in the area along Interstate 95. FHP sent a trooper out to that area where the caller stated they could smell smoke and the trooper indicated that there was not a visibility issue at that time.

The timeline provided by the Florida Forest Service also said:

The forecasted surface wind direction for the burn was north to northeast at 8-10 mph with gusts to 18 mph. The nighttime forecast was from the northeast at 3 mph. All forecasted surface winds would carry smoke away from the interstate.

Forecasted transport wind direction for the day was north at 10 mph during the day and northeast to east at 2-3 mph. These winds would carry the main column of smoke in a south, southwest and westerly direction putting any fallout from the column away from the interstate.