A driver was killed Thursday night on Interstate 4 in Tampa when a road sign toppled onto on the vehicle amid dangerous winds from Hurricane Helene, Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed.
“We have had a report of a fatality on the roadway. A car driving on I-4 near Ybor City in Tampa was hit when a sign fell onto the highway,” DeSantis said during a media briefing late Thursday night.
The death was apparently the first in Florida related to the hurricane, which at the time was more than a hundred miles away nearing the state’s Big Bend area. Tampa was experiencing tropical storm-strength winds from the hurricane.
“That just shows you that it’s very dangerous conditions out there,” DeSantis said.
The Florida Highway Patrol confirmed there was a crash, but there were no other specifics from local officials as of Friday morning.
An image from a Florida Department of Transportation camera showed the road sign atop the vehicle.
“We know that travel on the roads can be hazardous, and we typically, unfortunately, will have fatalities in every storm from that,” DeSantis said. “When you are out on the roads in the middle of one of these storms, that is very, very dangerous.”
