Arson

[Lady Cop]

if this is arson, it's 10 counts of murder so far.
the visibility was 0 due to smoke and fog. why didn't these drivers pull off to a rest area??
a lit ember (cigarette) could have caused this.
Florida is prone to HUGE out of control wildfires.



News13
GAINESVILLE --
Smoke from a brush fire causes multiple crashes leaving at least 10 people dead on I-75 Sunday.

The Florida Highway Patrol said there have been several crashes near Gainesville that have included at least four commercial vehicles and 10 passenger vehicles. Officials said at least nine people were confirmed dead. At least 18 people were taken to Shands Hospital; six patients through the level 1 trauma center and 12 in the emergency department.

The crashes are along a stretch of the highway north of the Marion County line.

FHP spokesman Patrick Riordan says the agency had closed Interstate 75 Saturday evening because of smoke from a brush fire in the Paynes Prairie area. Conditions improved and FHP reopened the highway. Sometime after that, the crashes occurred.

Riordan says U.S. 441 is also closed and traffic is being diverted onto U.S. 301 and State Road 27.

Troopers said the shutdown could last for several hours and that detour signs are now in place.

No further details were immediately available.

Arson led to brush fire?
Florida officials are investigating whether an arsonist set the fire that caused the smoke that led to the crash.

[Lady Cop]

A long line of cars and trucks collided one after another early Sunday on a dark Florida highway so shrouded in haze and smoke that drivers were virtually blinded. At least 10 people were killed.

Visibility was so poor that when rescuers first arrived, they could only listen for screams and moans to locate victims, police said. At least 18 people were hurt.

"You could hear cars hitting each other. People were crying. People were screaming. It was crazy," he said. "If I could give you an idea of what it looked like, I would say it looked like the end of world."

[Lady Cop]

i haven't heard anything yet about arson investigation. but FHP had JUST re-opened 75.

The Florida Highway Patrol said Tuesday another victim had been found amid the wreckage in Alachua County, bringing the toll to 11 dead and 18 injured.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -
Minutes before two pileups killed 10 people on a highway shrouded in fog and thick smoke from a brush fire, the Florida Highway Patrol had reopened the always busy six-lane interstate after an earlier serious accident.

A sergeant and lieutenant determined after about three hours that conditions had cleared enough for drivers, but visibility quickly became murky again, officials said Monday.

"We went through the area. We made an assessment. We came to the conclusion that the road was safe to travel and that is when we opened the road up," Highway patrol spokesman Lt. Patrick Riordan said in a news conference. "Drivers have to recognize that the environment changes. They have to be prepared to make good judgments."

ZERO VIS



A responding deputy's dashcam shows the lack of visibility on I-75 early Sunday morning.

[Lady Cop]

not that it matters now, but the entire family was illegal. the church is asking for donations to bury them.



Fifteen-year-old Lidiane Carmo, far right, lost her mother, father, sister, pictured left, and uncle in a crash caused by smoke from a brush fire that produced blackout conditions on I-75 near Gainesville on Sunday. Family claimed Miss Carmo came to the U.S. from Brazil on a tourist visa twelve years ago and never left, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said the high school freshman will not be forced to return to the country.
The family were part of a church delegation returning from a conference in Orlando to their home in Georgia when the accident happened along northbound lanes of the interstate.Mr Amazonas, senior pastor at the Igreja Internacional de Restaurcao, or International Church of the Restoration in Marietta, Georgia, outside Atlanta - where the young girl's father was a pastor - said parishioners feared she might be forced to return to Brazil after officials discovered she was in the U.S. illegally, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

People get stupid driving in the smoke, most slow down which is what they should do. Others seem to think that the thing to do is STOP in the middle of the interstate, of course the guys coming up behind them don't know that and you end up with a dodge jammed under your pickup. Oh, and folks get killed.

[Lady Cop]

i'll be interested in knowing whether an inmate started this. imagine being trapped in a cell during a fire.
there's not much to burn really, just steel and cement.

Fox
Trapped inmates screamed from their cells as a fire swept through a Honduran prison, killing at least 300 inmates, authorities said Wednesday.

Lucy Marder, chief of forensic medicine for the prosecutor's office, said early Wednesday some 356 people on the prison roster are unaccounted for among 852 prisoners.

"The majority could be dead, though others could have suffered burns, escaped or survived," she said.

The fire broke out Tuesday night at a prison in Comayagua, a town 90 miles north of the Central American country's capital, Tegucigalpa.

Comayagua fire department spokesman Josue Garcia described the blaze as "hellish," saying he saw "horrific" scenes while trying to put out the fire, saying inmates rioted in attempts to escape. He said "some 100 prisoners were burned to death or suffocated in their cells."

"We couldn't get them out because we didn't have the keys and couldn't find the guards who had them," Garcia said. WOW!

Officials are investigating whether the fire was triggered by rioting prisoners or by an electrical short-circuit, said Danilo Orellana, head of the national prison system.

[Lady Cop]

dead







Police fire at the ground to warn relatives of the victims



Police and soldiers, bottom, and journalists, top, hide in a lookout post during the clashes