DATE: Sunday, October 5, 1997               TAG: 9710050054

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3A  EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CANTON                            LENGTH:   47 lines

FOG-DETECTION SYSTEM FOR I-40 MAY BE READY LATE NEXT MONTH

An electronic fog detection system should be operating along Interstate 40 in eastern Haywood County by late November, state Department of Transportation officials say.

Work on the $1 million system is about 40 percent complete, said Ron Watson, DOT division construction engineer in Sylva. The project's contractor is Georgia Electric of Albany, Ga.

When operational, the system's network of fog sensors, fiber-optic cables and message boards will be a first-of-its-kind system in North Carolina. It is designed to warn motorists of dense fog in the low-lying areas between mile markers 28-34 near Canton.

Installation of the system comes nearly two years after a 46-car pileup along that same stretch in January 1996 killed a Weaverville man and injured 18 others.

Calls for some sort of fog detection system began after that wreck and in light of other fog-related chain reaction pileups on the interstate that, since 1977, have killed four people and injured dozens.

Experts say the low-lying areas near Canton are subject to temperature inversions where warm, moist and stagnant air traps cool air in valleys. If the cool air reaches its dew point, fog results.

The new system will contain components similar to one on Interstate 75 northeast of Chattanooga, Tenn., which DOT officials inspected last year.

``This is not as complex a system as that one over there,'' Watson said.

``We took the better parts of two or three projects and put them together.''

Acting DOT resident engineer Cameron Cochran said the new system will work like this: When three strategically placed sensors between Clyde and Canton detect dense fog, they will trigger two large overhead message boards to display warnings to approaching motorists.

The message boards, which will be built near mile marker 28 on the eastbound side and near mile marker 34 on the westbound side, will give drivers instructions on what speed to travel and how to negotiate the fog.

The sensors will also trigger an alarm at the North Carolina Highway Patrol's Asheville headquarters so troopers can monitor traffic flow and potential hazards, he said.

Two other overhead message boards will warn motorists of problems in the Pigeon River gorge and of traffic delays near the Haywood-Buncombe County line.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu