The Florida Highway Patrol has re-opened 14 miles of Interstate 4 closed Wednesday in Polk County after a massive 70-car pileup.

Workers have finished resurfacing 650 feet of the highway left deeply gouged and scorched by the accident just east of State Road 559.

A final inspection occurred around 6 p.m. and the Department of Transportation sent out a release at 6:25 p.m. announcing that the road is open.

Workers started ripping up the asphalt to lay down a new surface late Wednesday but halted work when another thick blanket of fog rolled in – like the one that triggered the crashes the day before.

Work stopped at 3 a.m. and didn’t resume until about 9 a.m.

I-4 was closed beacuse of the accident between the Polk Parkway and U.S. 27, about 14 miles of I-4.

It’s not certain how long I-4 will remain open. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Cindy Clemmons-Adente said more fog is forecast overnight and as a result portions of the interstate could again be shut down.

- Rich Shopes

The Florida Highway Patrol will make a decision by 6:30 tonight as to whether to re-open 14 miles of Interstate 4 in Polk County that was shut down early Wednesday after a massive 70-car pileup.

Department of Transportation spokeswoman Cindy Clemmons-Adente said repairs to 650-foot stretch of the highway are mostly complete and workers had only to finish laying down the white striping.

“If everything looks good, the Florida Highway Patrol will open the highway,” she said.

The road was closed at about 5:45 a.m. Wednesday and crews started to repair the most damaged section of highway, just east of State Road 559, at about 10:30 p.m.

Work was halted a few hours later when another thick blanket of fog rolled in, like the one that triggered the crashes the day before.

It’s not certain how long I-4 will remain open. Clemmons-Adente said more fog is forecast for overnight and that the highway patrol could make a decision to close the interstate.

- Rich Shopes

The Florida Highway Patrol has released information about vehicles involved in the major portion of Wednesday’s Interstate 4 collisions. The FHP did not release the identities of the four people who died or the drivers.

Here’s the year, make, model and damage of the vehicles, if known:

Forestry officials are rethinking procedures after a controlled burn raged out of control a half mile from Interstate 4 on Tuesday. Smoke from the fire is widely believed to have increased the density of fog that caused a 70-vehicle pileup near U.S. 27 early Wednesday morning.

Critics have questioned why the burning was done so close to the interstate during extremely dry conditions.

“In a situation like this you’re going to rethink what you’re doing,” said Chris Kintner, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Forestry in Lakeland. “And we’re getting close to cutting off all burning. We do look at that on yearly basis.”

The forestry agency, part of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, issues most burn permits in the state and can put restrictions on burning, including burn bans. So far, the forestry agency has not taken that step, having issued 34 burn authorizations in Polk and Hillsborough counties on Wednesday alone.

Most of those were for burning brush piles on agricultural land.

Kintner said the agency is going through an intense self-evaluation in light of the failure to keep the fire contained to the 10 acres prescribed for a burn. Kintner said the man in charge of the prescribed burn, Steve Burger, was devastated by the turn of events.

Still, the agency is not second-guessing its policy of authorizing controlled burns in the 19th month of a drought that has hit west-central Florida particularly hard.

“Hindsight is 20-20. You always rethink it after the fact,” Kintner said. “(But) We will have the kind of wildfires they have in California if we don’t do prescribed burns. People will lose their homes.”

Department of Agriculture law enforcement agents are investigating whether the smoke played a part in the wall of fog that caused four deaths and 38 injuries Wednesday morning. 

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