The Florida Highway Patrol has carried a crash with injuries on Interstate 75 northbound near Fort Myers since 12.16 this afternoon, a unit was recorded on scene at 1.04, and the state has still not published whether any lane is blocked
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The Florida Highway Patrol dispatch board has carried a crash with injuries on Interstate 75 northbound at mile marker 126 in Lee County since 12.16 this afternoon, and the entry was still on the board when this was written, shortly before 2 o'clock.
The call was received at 12.16, a unit was recorded dispatched at 12.24, and a unit was recorded on scene at 1.04, about forty eight minutes after the call came in. The board was genuinely populated on each of the three readings behind this item, carrying 69, 67 and 67 incident rows statewide across more than twenty counties, so none of them is a failed read reporting a false all clear.
The remarks field reads UNKNOWN ROADBLOCK. That is the state recording that it does not know the roadblock status, and it is worth being plain about what it does not mean: it is not a finding that a lane is shut, and it is not a finding that the road is clear. The state has published nothing about the traffic effect either way.
The board has moved the location during the call. It read mile marker 126 when the row first appeared, mile marker 128 for about twenty minutes after that, and mile marker 126 again since, with the coordinates it publishes moving with the marker across about two miles of carriageway. The receipt and dispatch stamps are identical throughout, so this is one call whose location the state has revised rather than two separate crashes.
The coordinates now on the row reverse geocode to Interstate 75 in the Three Oaks and Miromar Lakes area of Lee County, postcode 33967, which is the Estero and San Carlos Park stretch rather than Fort Myers proper, notwithstanding the FORT MYERS tag in the board's own location string. The numbered interchanges in that stretch are Corkscrew Road at exit 123 and Alico Road at exit 128, with none between them, so a marker at 126 is open carriageway rather than an exit.
What the entry does establish is that somebody was hurt: the incident type the state assigns is a crash with injuries. Beyond that the public record is empty. There is no injury count, no vehicle count, no cause, no names and no vehicle types. The Highway Patrol has issued no release, the Lee County Sheriff's Office has issued no release, and no outlet had the crash when this was written. Nobody has been accused of anything.
One caution about watching for the end of it. This board publishes no clearance column of any kind, which was checked on today's readings rather than carried over from a previous run, so when the row eventually comes off the board that will be the state ending publication of the call rather than the state saying the road has reopened.
Nothing in the weather is contributing as far as the record goes. A reading of the National Weather Service active alert feed at 1.53 this afternoon returned a single active alert in the whole of Florida, a Special Weather Statement covering six Panhandle zones, and neither Lee nor Collier is under any weather product.
