The Highway Patrol has a smoke caution running on Interstate 75 northbound at mile marker 125 in Lee County, logged as a brush fire at 4.43 p.m. Tuesday
The Florida Highway Patrol logged a brush or forest fire on Interstate 75 northbound at mile marker 125 in Lee County at 4.43.54 p.m. on Tuesday, and put the remark smoke in area use caution against it.
This desk read the Highway Patrol live incident view directly four times, at about 4.47 p.m., about 4.48 p.m., at 4.49.42 p.m. and at 4.52.57 p.m. The record was on the board on all four reads and its dispatch and clear columns were empty on all four. The board carried 99 rows on the first read, 101 on the two that followed and 98 on the last.
No roadblock is claimed on the record. No lane is recorded as blocked and nothing on it says the road is closed, so what the Highway Patrol is publishing is a caution about smoke on a route that remains open.
The Highway Patrol places the record in Fort Myers and its coordinates, 26.4628 north and 81.7879 west, put it in southern Lee County.
Two Lee or Collier records sat on the board at the time of reading and this was one of them. The other is a vehicle crash on I-75 northbound at mile marker 143 in North Fort Myers, received just after three o'clock, dispatched three minutes later and cleared at 3.34 p.m. with the remark no roadblock. That one is finished.
Nothing else exists on this fire. No agency has published a statement about it. The Highway Patrol has released no account beyond the record, the Lee County Sheriff's Office has published nothing, and no fire district or forestry service has issued anything. No acreage, no cause, no containment figure and no injury count has been released by anyone, and none is asserted here.
No newsroom is carrying it either. The most recent Gulf Coast News article at the time of reading was stamped 3.50 p.m., about fifty three minutes before the fire was logged, and a scan of the WINK news pages returned nothing matching it. That is what would be expected of a record four minutes old rather than a reason to doubt it.
One limit needs stating rather than leaving implied. An open record on this board means the entry has not been closed out, and it does not by itself mean an incident is still running. The same board carries a third brush or forest fire, in Miami-Dade, received on Sunday afternoon and still showing no clear time two days later, and the oldest stamp anywhere on it is from the first of April. So the claim this item stands behind is that the Highway Patrol is displaying a smoke caution for that stretch of I-75 now, and not that a fire is confirmed to be burning there now.
Interstate 75 is a state road and falls inside Highway Patrol jurisdiction, so an incident on it is expected to appear on this board. County and city streets do not appear on it and are sheriff calls instead, so nothing read here bears on roads off the interstate.
Update, 6.56 p.m. Tuesday. The mile marker 125 record is no longer on the Highway Patrol board. This desk read the board twice more, at about 6.55 p.m. and about 6.56 p.m., and the record was absent from both, while the board itself stayed live and its newest entry advanced between the two reads. The smoke caution is therefore no longer being displayed and the caution above no longer applies to anyone setting out now. No agency has published anything about the fire, so what ended is the advisory rather than a described incident, and no acreage, cause or containment figure exists from any authority. The single Lee or Collier entry on the board at the time of the later reads is unrelated to this one, a construction record placing a left lane closure on the Collier Boulevard ramp to Alligator Alley northbound at exit 101 in Naples, logged at 6.28 p.m.
