By RON TODT Associated Press
An elevated section of Interstate 95 collapsed early Sunday in Northeast Philadelphia after a vehicle caught fire, closing the main north-south highway on the East Coast and threatening to upend commutes for thousands in the region.
Transportation officials warned of extensive delays and street closures and urged drivers to avoid the area. Officials said the tanker contained a petroleum product that may have been hundreds of gallons of gasoline. The fire was reported to be under control.
Video from the scene showed a massive concrete slab had fallen from I-95, near the Cottman Avenue exit, onto the road below. There were no reports of injuries.
The northbound lanes of I-95 were gone, and the southbound lanes were “compromised” due to heat from the fire, said Derek Bowmer, battalion chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department. Runoff from the fire or perhaps broken gas lines were causing explosions underground, he added.
Some kind of crash happened on a ramp underneath northbound I-95 around 6:15 a.m. The northbound section above the fire collapsed quickly, state Transportation Department spokesman Brad Rudolph said.
Mark Fusetti, a retired Philadelphia police sergeant, said he was driving south toward the city’s airport when he noticed thick black smoke rising over the highway. As he passed the fire, the road beneath began to “dip,” creating a noticeable depression that was visible in video he took of the scene, he said.
He saw traffic in his rearview mirror come to a halt. Soon after, the northbound lanes of the highway crumbled.
“It was crazy timing,” Fusetti said. “For it to buckle and collapse that quickly, it’s pretty remarkable.”
The southbound lanes were heavily damaged, “and we are assessing that now,” Rudolph said Sunday afternoon.
The collapsed section of I-95 was part of a $212 million reconstruction project that wrapped up four years ago, Rudolph said. There was no immediate time frame for reopening the highway, but officials would consider “a fill-in situation or a temporary structure” to accelerate the effort, he said.
I-95 remained closed between the Aramingo and Woodhaven Road exits, according to city officials. Motorists were sent on a 43-mile detour that took diverted them onto Roosevelt Boulevard, I-76 and the Vine Street Expressway. Rudolph said the arrangement was going “better than it would do on a weekday,” Rudolph said. The fact that the collapse happened on a Sunday helped ease congestion.
He expected traffic “to back up significantly on all the detour areas.”
SEPTA indicated it plans to increase service on the Trenton, West Trenton and Fox Chase Regional Rail lines in the wake of the crash. Bus routes 70, 78, and 84 are being detoured.
Officials were also concerned about the environmental effects of runoff into the nearby Delaware River. After a sheen was seen in the Delaware River near the collapse site, the Coast Guard deployed a boom to contain the material. Ensign Josh Ledoux said the tanker had a capacity of 8,500 gallons, but the contents did not appear to be spreading into the environment.
“As far as waterways go, it’s being contained, and it seems like things are under control,” he said.
The Philadelphia Water Department said the fire and collapse have not impacted drinking water quality.
Thousands of tons of steel and concrete were piled atop the site of the fire, and heavy construction equipment would be required to start to remove the debris, said Dominick Mireles, director of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management.
Trash collection may be delayed in parts of the Northeast, the city’s Streets Department said, though officials advised residents to continue putting cans out on the designated day.
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, whose district covers the eastern half of the city, tweeted Sunday that he reached out to President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to “ensure that all available federal resource be deployed quickly to repair the damaged section of I-95.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a Twitter post that Biden was briefed on the collapse and that White House officials were in contact with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney’s offices to offer assistance.
“This is a major artery for people and goods, and the closure will have significant impacts on the city and region until reconstruction and recovery are complete,” Buttigieg said in a social media post.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to investigate the fire and collapse.
Most drivers traveling the I-95 corridor between Delaware and New York City use the New Jersey Turnpike rather than the segment of interstate where the collapse occurred. Until 2018, drivers did not have a direct highway connection between I-95 in Pennsylvania and I-95 in New Jersey. They had to use a few miles of surface roads, with traffic lights, to get from one to the other.
The fire was strikingly similar to another blaze in Philadelphia in March 1996, when an illegal tire dump under I-95 caught fire, melting guard rails and buckling the pavement.
The highway was closed for several weeks, and partial closures lasted for six months. Seven teenagers were charged with arson. The dump’s owner was sentenced to seven to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $3 million of the $6.5 million repair costs, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
More recently in Atlanta, an elevated portion of Interstate 85 collapsed in a fire, shutting down the heavily traveled route through the heart of the city in March 2017. A homeless man was accused of starting the blaze, but federal investigators said in a report that the state transportation department’s practice of storing combustible construction materials under the highway increased the risk of fire.
Metro’s Jack Tomczuk contributed to this report.
