Fires Burn at Both Ends of Florida
- By KAREN TESTA, AP - June 99
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - One person was killed and 20
others injured when five tractor-trailers crashed into an overturned truck Tuesday on a
smoke-shrouded highway where firefighters battled fast-spreading wildfires.
About 20,000 acres of flaming sawgrass, brush and muck in the Rotenberger
Wildlife Management Area sent heavy smoke into South Florida skies for the fifth day.
Authorities said the smoke likely contributed to the fatal crash on U.S. 27.
Most lanes in a 30-mile stretch of the roadway were closed after visibility shrunk to
zero.
Before then, a truck headed northbound hit the median and overturned when its
driver became blinded by smoke. Five tractor-trailers crashed into the overturned truck,
and two of them erupted in flames, said Lt. Pembrook Burrows of the Florida Highway
Patrol.
``A few minutes later, a van with 13 farm workers plowed into the back of
that,'' Burrows said.
Police did not know the extent of the 20 injuries. In North Florida's
Baker County, west of Jacksonville, fire crews battled a remote blaze that swelled to
11,000 acres in the Osceola National Forest. The fire grew nearly 20 times its size in two
days since Sunday, jumping across Florida Highway 2 and into the 400,000-acre Okefenokee
National Wildlife Refuge that crosses into Georgia.
No homes or businesses have been threatened by either fire, both of which were
started by lightning.
Dry conditions have made the North Florida fire especially difficult, to fight
said Steve Parsons, a U.S. Forestry Service spokesman. Also, the area is full of ``insects
and snakes and things that make life kind of miserable,'' he said. President
Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton were scheduled to arrive late Tuesday for vacation in
Yulee, about 40 miles east of the North Florida fire. Residents said the area was clear of
smoke at mid-afternoon.
In southwestern Palm Beach County, firefighters worked to ignite back fires to
contain that blaze, which more than doubled in size overnight and has left up to 10,000
more acres of muck smoldering, said Sue Congelosi, a state Division of Forestry
spokeswoman.
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