August 6 - August 11
Wednesday - Day FourSavannah-MiamiOur last day on the road. We are approaching Jacksonville, having crossed the many rivers of Georgia, culminating in the St Mary's River which divides Georgia from Florida. Yesterday, on the historic trolley tour of Savannah, we learned that Georgia had been settled by English debtors seeking a fresh start. * Just after passing Daytona Beach we hit a huge traffic jam - a complete stoppage of movement. We sit, unmoving, for half an hour, as on both shoulders of the road various emergency vehicles - paramedics, fire trucks, sherriffs and police - scream by. Philip gets out to see what's going on & can't; up ahead the road curves and we can't see beyond that. A nearby truck driver engages him in conversation. Philip gets back into the car with an alarming story. Apparently, up ahead & out of sight, a tanker carrying some sort of chemical has plowed through a flat-bed trailer. The traffic is blocked because the authorities are not too sure about the chemical, and are worried (so the truck driver says) that it will blow. This is what that driver volunteered (he got it off his CB radio): "There was a tanker ahead that was carrying hazardous chemical waste. It ran into a flat-bed truck." He assumed that the driver of the tanker was dead, and if the chemicals were spilling out, and there was an explosion, we were all locked in on the highway, which would form a natural vacuum and suck the flames our way. "When you see a helicopter flying over," he said, "you know someone's dead." By the end there were three helicopters, and cars from every agency in the area: local police, state police, sherriffs, paramedics, fire trucks. Philip told me nothing of the fiery vaccuum theory while we were waiting. this was wise of him. Despite my alarmist tendencies, however, I would have taken this all with a grain of salt, as more and more official vehicles were still barrelling along the shoulders as the truck driver was speaking, and on the other side of the highway, going north, cars still sped by. Clearly if there was as much chance of a conflagration as the driver believed, both sides of I-95 would be closed. Finally we get word from behind us that the sherriffs are asking us to turn around and return to the last exit,, where we are diverted from the interstate onto the old highway, US-1. After 20 minutes of slow-moving traffic we are back on our way, not going as fast as before, but as surely headed for Miami. Later, back on I-95, we learn that the hazardous chemical in the tanker was some hydrogen compound - hydrogen dioxide maybe (I *thought* I heard hydrogen peroxide, but that gave rise to visions of a section of I-95 unexpected bleaching in the sun). * Entering Broward County I realize we have entered the semi-tropical zone for real. I recognize the trees. The sun is sliding sideways. In the distance a huge raincloud darkens the western horizon, and even as the speaker on the radio claims that there is only a 30 per cent chance of rain, we can see the downpour far away. The houses are low-slung and many are pink; light colours dominate. Casuarinas feather the boulevards and I think: the Bahamas, our islands, are Florida breakaways in landscape. We check into our hotel and outside of our room window we can see a part of the Miami airport runway. This is a little worrying since I've just seen a story on the news about a plane that crashed into a house. Anyway, it's been a long day and even though we spent ten hours on the road today, it did not feel as long as our drive to Washington DC. Maybe it was because of all the excitement and it could have also been the fact that we knew this was last long drive of the trip. |
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