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Florida Wildfires Keep I-4 Closed

A stubborn swamp fire has a section of I-4 in Polk County, Florida, closed for the fourth day -- and officials still have no idea when they'll be able to re-open the road

by Staff
February 20, 2001
1 min to read


A stubborn swamp fire has a section of I-4 in Polk County, Florida, closed for the fourth day -- and officials still have no idea when they'll be able to re-open the road.

According to a report in The Orlando Sentinel, The 15-mile stretch of I-4 typically carries as many as 60,000 vehicles a day. Authorities have stopped recommending State Road 33 as an alternative route, although they have not yet closed it. That means more traffic on an already overloaded U.S. 27.
By 10:30 a.m. Monday, there was a 6-mile-long line waiting to get off the interstate and onto U.S. 27, the paper reported. "It was easy to tell the tourists from the truckers on Interstate 4 on Monday," the paper said. "Tourists were looking at their maps. Truckers were looking at their watches."
Jose Vasquez, who was hauling Coca-Cola products from Orlando to the Tamp area, told the paper the trip normally took him about an hour and 15 minutes. The fire detour was more than doubling that time, costing him at least an extra hour and a half.

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