I-10 Fire Update
We wrote yesterday about the fire that took place under a bridge along Interstate 10 in Los Angeles. Now, more details have unfolded.
Those Details
In his latest statement regarding the I-10 closure, California Governor Gavin Newsom reports that investigators have determined that the fire of wooden pallets was caused by arson, meaning that someone did it intentionally.
Beyond better knowing the cause of the fire, government officials now have a timeline regarding when the I-10 will be open again. Inspectors found that 100 columns were damaged, with nine of ten of them being damaged severely. It is estimated that it will take 3 to 5 weeks to fully repair the damaged columns to where I-10 is safe for vehicles to travel across it.
“The state is working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to get this done.” Newsom said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
In our previous article, we mentioned that other roads would have to absorb the resulting traffic of 300,000 vehicles that traveled by I-10 every day, and now we have a number: surface streets in Los Angeles have reported a 14.7% increase in traffic volume, and anyone who has ever driven surface streets in the largest city in California knows than even a 1% increase to that nightmare is unacceptable.
The I-10 closure is also expected to cause slowdowns in the delivery of goods to and from both the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, meaning consumers will have to wait longer to get their goods. Hopefully, this incident does not linger into the holiday season, but with it being sooner than five weeks out, that is a possibility.
Conclusion
Our advice to you as a trucker is, unless your delivery start point or end point is explicitly in the City of Angels, to avoid the entire greater Los Angeles area entirely. Traffic in that area is harsh to truckers on a good day, let alone when congestion is over 10 percent stronger than it normally is. Stay the course, and hopefully this will all be over soon enough.
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