I-10 Closed in Los Angeles
A fire had broken out under Interstate 10 in Los Angeles on November 11th. Now, officials are shutting down the roadway to make repairs, with no reopening in the foreseeable future.
Details
On the night of Veteran’s Day, scattered wooden pallets under the bridge caught ablaze and damaged the bridge above it. Nobody was hurt in the fire, and governments on both the local and state level want to prevent any injuries in the aftermath were the bridge to collapse, so it is closed for repairs.
“I want to emphasize that our efforts on this are going to have to be 24/7 to get this roadway back open,” California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin said in a statement regarding the closure. “I’m not going to understate the challenge here. It is significant.”
Indeed, according to California Governor Gavin Newsom, approximately 300,000 vehicles travel across what would otherwise be a healthy section of bridge every day. Now officials at agencies such as Caltrans are scrambling to mitigate the impact of the closure, offering alternative routes that will no doubt have increased travel times due to increased traffic on the roadways.
In his public statement, the same one where Gavin Newsom cited the 300,000 vehicles statistic, the governor made comparisons to the I-95 bridge in Philadelphia that was repaired in roughly two weeks.
“But don’t compare the two,” he said. “The scale of this is substantially greater.” Considering the damage is estimated to be in the triple digits for the number of damaged support pillars, he may have a point.
Conclusion
Our only solid advice we can offer for you, the truck driver, is to avoid Los Angeles. Even using nearby highways such as Route 101 will not yield much fruit, as the surrounding roads absorb the cars that would have otherwise traveled along the I-10.
Perhaps the most interesting fact about this story is that because of the sheer scope of the damage, with over 400 feet of bridge needing to be repaired, there is no set timeline as to when the I-10 will be open for travel yet again.
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