brushfires a -burnin'

The flashing sign on I-95 north of Cocoa, Fla., did not sway me from the interstate. After all, the supposed traffic information channel, 1600 AM, was happily playing Latino music. Local FM stations were not interrupting Sheryl Crow to tell me about any possible closures ahead. And, the capper: The blond clerk in the automotive travel department at the Melbourne branch of AAA told me earlier in the day that, no, there are no closures on I-95 today, would you like a bag for your travel books? A bag? No. A firehose? Possibly.


About 1/4 mile south of the Edgewater exit, it became clear that the billowing orange cloud I had been seeing for the past hour was not a thunderstorm but yes, indeed, a brush fire raging just to the west of I-95 in Edgewater.

I shot these pictures from my car as I waited to exit the highway using a Canon digital camera. The shot of the trailer is from Federal Highway, to which we northbound drivers were detoured. The wind was blowing east toward the ocean.