Deadly car crash in Keys closes 3 schools and shuts down Overseas Highway
A fatal car crash in the Florida Keys on Tuesday morning knocked down power lines, caused traffic delays on U.S. 1 — the only major road traveling through the 120-mile island chain — and forced officials to shut down three schools for the day.
The crash happened at 4:20 a.m. in Key Largo at mile marker 98 in the southbound lanes of the highway, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
The Florida Highway Patrol said one woman, the only person in the car, was killed. The FHP did not name or give the age of the woman, who lived in Key West. A brief statement on the crash said only that her car “left roadway striking [a] utility pole.”
Police reopened the southbound lanes around 9:30 a.m., but traffic was backed up for miles until at least noon.
Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for the Monroe County School District, said administrators decided to close Key Largo School, Plantation Key School and Coral Shores High School as a result of the disruption caused by the crash. “A road closure and subsequent power outages caused by the crash mean potentially lengthy disruptions to those schools’ ability to operate,” Herrin said in a statement. District officials plan to reopen the schools on Wednesday, Herrin said.
The Florida Keys Electric Cooperative, which provides power to most of the Keys, said the crash caused a broken in-line distribution pole, broken insulators and a primary feeder conductor wire on the ground. More than 1,240 customers lost power, according to the utility. Crews restored power shortly before 8 a.m.
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President Joe Biden’s Cabinet took steps toward belated completion on Tuesday with the confirmation of a United Nations ambassador and an agriculture secretary, but other top posts remained locked in partisan confirmation hearings.
The race to question prospective Cabinet officials led to overlapping hearings throughout the morning, as Democrats labored to staff key roles that most of Biden’s predecessors had filled much earlier in their first terms.
The Senate voted to confirm Linda Thomas-Greenfield as the U.N. ambassador and Thomas Vilsack as the secretary of Agriculture. Both Thomas-Greenfield and Vilsack were confirmed by comfortable margins, with Vilsack clearing 92-7 to become the Agriculture secretary for the second time.
Earlier in the day, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up a second day of questioning Biden’s attorney-general nominee, Merrick Garland. Garland’s hearing was again predominantly civil and straightforward, with members of both parties continuing to strike the same deferential tone that they set in praising his qualifications on Monday.
The atmosphere was less easygoing in other committee rooms.
Rep. Deb Haaland of
New Mexico, Biden’s pick for Interior secretary, faced a litany of questions, particularly from senators from states still reliant on fossilfuel extraction. over the fierce stance that she has taken in the past against fossil fuels.
Key among them was
Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W. Va., who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has resisted efforts to scale down coal production in his state and whose vote might be crucial to Haaland’s chances of confirmation.
If confirmed, Haaland would be the first Native American to lead a Cabinetlevel department, in this case the Interior Department, which has abused and neglected Indigenous Americans for much of the nation’s history.
Haaland sought to play down her past activism, pledging to follow the Biden administration’s policy priorities.
“If I’m confirmed as secretary, it’s President Biden’s agenda, not my own agenda, that I would be moving forward,” she said.
She will appear before the committee for a second day
Wednesday.
Tuesday also marked the first of two challenging confirmation hearings for Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California and Biden’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services.
In contentious questioning, Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee sought to portray Becerra, who has little experience in public health, as unqualified, while painting his positions on abortion and healthcare as radical.
Becerra, who will lead an extensive coronavirus vaccination effort if confirmed, said he sought to focus on the country’s most immediate challenges stemming from the pandemic and find opportunities to compromise on more politicized health policies.
“When I come to these issues, I understand that we may not always agree on where to go,” he said, “but I think we can find some common ground.”
Becerra will face another round of questioning from the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Finance Committee also convened a confirmation hearing for Adewale O. Adeyemo, Biden’s pick to serve as deputy Treasury secretary.
The steady beat of hearings helped make up for lost time for senators who spent six days this month focused entirely on former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
It also cleared the way for senators to consider even more nominees this week. On Wednesday, senators will take up William J. Burns’ nomination to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, and on Thursday they will turn to Katherine C. Tai’s nomination to serve as the United States trade representative.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, bombarded with national criticism over a Cancún getaway as his frozen state shivered in the dark last week, said Tuesday that the incident illustrated “how ridiculously politicized” the country is — but he didn’t stop there.
“Here’s a suggestion, just don’t be a--holes,” said Cruz, R-Texas. “Yeah, like just you know treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect.”
Cruz doesn’t exactly practice what he preaches. He called a Democratic senator a “complete ass” for requesting elected officials wear masks while in the Senate chamber and was among the Republicans repeating the bogus claim that the November victory of President Joe Biden came in a rigged election.
The Texas senator, in a podcast appearance, said his spouse, Heidi, was irate over the leak of group texts from the family’s widely panned warm-weather getaway to Mexico’s warmer climes last week as Texans struggled without power or potable water.
Heidi Cruz noted in the group messages that their home was “FREEZING” and invited friends to join her at the swanky Ritz-Carlton in the Mexican city,
The New York Times reported.
“Heidi is pretty pissed at that,” said Cruz about the leak in an episode of “Ruthless.” “She actually was over at her neighbor’s house yesterday sort of walking through” the issue.
Cruz jetted out of Houston on Wednesday and returned a day later, licking his wounds as critics pounced on his jaw-dropping decision to flee his freezing state while it was wracked by widespread power outages.
The U.S. State Department has advised Americans to avoid travel to Mexico due to the pandemic.