{"id":50778,"date":"2024-10-10T20:18:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T00:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=50778"},"modified":"2024-10-10T20:18:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T00:18:08","slug":"hurricane-milton-response-crew-member-fatality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/10\/10\/hurricane-milton-response-crew-member-fatality\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Milton Response Crew Member Fatality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An accident at the cross street of Brooke Road and US HWY 98 near Fort Meade, early this morning took the life of a Polk County employee.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Around 5:45 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10, following Hurricane Milton, Polk County Fire Rescue, and the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office responded to a call involving two Polk County Roads and Drainage employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cpush crews\u201d were to report to work when it was safe to be out and begin clearing roads, following last night\u2019s major hurricane. The crew was in the process of cutting down a tree that had fallen and was blocking US 98 when a vehicle struck a Fort Meade Maintenance Unit Service Worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruce Kinsler, 68 was killed. He had served Polk County for about a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The driver of the vehicle was another Polk County employee, who was coming to join the crew for post-storm recovery. The employee was transported to the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safety precautions were in place and personal protective equipment was worn, according to established roadway safety procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe tragedy of this incident is compounded by the fact that Bruce Kinsler was killed serving the residents of this county,\u201d said Bill Braswell, Polk County Commission Board Chair. \u201cWe ask a lot of the employees as public servants, and they respond to the call. For this to happen is just a tragedy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the second roadwork-related fatality in the division in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn behalf of the Board of County Commissioners, the County Manager\u2019s Office and the entire Polk County family, we want the family of Mr. Kinsler to know that we are deeply sorry for their loss,\u201d said County Manager Bill Beasley.\u201d \u201cMr. Kinsler was dedicated to serving Polk County\u2019s residents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An accident at the cross street of Brooke Road and US HWY 98 near Fort Meade, early this morning took the life of a Polk County employee. Around 5:45 a.m.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":50779,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/download-1-2.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[10009],"class_list":["post-50778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-hurricane-milton-response-crew-member-fatality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50780,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50778\/revisions\/50780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}