Fatal Car Accident on i-95 Today USA America

This is Long I 95 in Volatile County. At least three people were dead. Many more were injured after a number of separate crashes along the roadway. Kristen west has got your workarounds this morning trying to get around the crash scene. Esther Motto lives at a nearby hospital where they are treating some of those victims.  We do want to start with Amanda. We talked about her, of course, at the scene. The visibility even going to her now. You can see the haze behind you.

So while visibility has technically improved because of the sun coming up, it's also producing glare on all of that fog and smoke. But you can see part of the worst of one of these accidents behind me here involving a tractor-trailer here and some vehicles around it. You can just see a huge chunk of it missing from where it caught fire and burned away. Now, this was a very tragic event here this morning. Accidents on both sides of I 95 in the northbound and southbound lanes. At this part of the accident, two people were killed here. And then a little further down the road, one person was killed. Now, a person who was driving along I 95 at the time of these accidents sent us these photos, just awful pictures here of those flames and those totaled vehicles.

 That stands for a couple of miles here on I 95. And that's why this interstate is shut down now and has been since around 130 this morning and will continue to be, according to troopers for the rest of the day. This is still a very active investigation as to what caused this crash or contributed to this crash. As we mentioned, there is some very dense fog and smoke in the area. So that is part of the investigation into what went wrong. But Kim Monte said the dense fog in this area has been bad for quite some time. And when they spoke to some witnesses, they told them that this fog suddenly appeared. So it sounds like they were not prepared for the wall of fog that they were met with. And it's just a matter of figuring out what led up to this chain of events going wrong for these drivers. We have gotten three confirmed deaths and several people transported to the hospital with injuries, including a child. And we are told that that child is in stable condition right now. 

Now Has, Matt and NTSB are also on their way to conduct their investigations to help with the situation. But this is going to be a very long, drawn-out day. So thousands of people are going to have to find alternative routes around I 95 here in Fellowship County. we're expecting hours yet before that's, even close to reopening. We do check in with Nestor's mother right now. Nestor, you're outside a hospital where some of the victims are being treated this morning. That's right. When we first heard about the crash this morning, we came here to Halifax Medical Center because it was nearby. And then about around 530 this morning, we learned that some of the injured were, in fact, taken here. And we just got an update from Florida Highway Patrol.

 They actually said that miraculously, many of the injured are nonlife-threatening. So a lot of them are going to be okay. But we are still working to learn, though, is exactly how many people were injured. And that sort of highway patrol says they're also trying to work. We do know three people died. One child was airlifted to Arnold Palmer in stable condition. And then we also have learned that of the dead, one of them was a semi-truck driver and one of them was an SUV driver involved in the accidents. Again, officials have called it since early this morning a mass casualty event. When we talk casualties, we mean dead and injured.

 Now we're trying to find out exactly how many were hurt. But one good update we did get from Kim was that most of them are non-life-threatening injuries. I live in Volusia County.  A quick recap of what we know this morning. Three people died in a series of several crashes that all happened along with I 95-year mile marker of 44. Five on one side, one on the other. A child was airlifted to Arnold Palmer. A number of people, as Nestor just said, have been transported to the hospital working to learn more details this morning, including the condition of the child that was airlifted. Troopers only say that the child is stable. It's unclear how many people are hospitalized or exactly how many vehicles. We do know at least 15. It's not known exactly what caused the crashes, but visibility is certainly a factor to some degree.

So that just gives you an idea of how significant this is, Chris? Oh, absolutely. And I want to take you outside right now. This is a view from one of our dot cameras on I 95 in Edgewater. So we're talking vouch county on both sides I 95 shut down and you can still see that haze, that foggy smoky haze that's blanketing I 95 and it's really just through this part of town. That is why meteorologists at the national weather service I just got off the phone about an hour ago.

 They're thinking that there was some type of prescribed burn, some controlled burn near the interstate because when you have this hyper-localized visibility issue I mean these drivers couldn't see a foot in front of them. It is most likely the result of some type of smoke and fog mixture. This is a look from our camera in new Smyrna Beach and again the interstate is shut down from exit 249 in new Smyrna or that exit for state road 44 all the way down past Edgewater exit 244.