COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Repairs on a busy part of I-95 in Philadelphia could take months after a tanker truck crashed under a bridge over the weekend, leading to a massive fire and causing the bridge to collapse.
The situation has some similarities to a crash that happened in central Ohio about eight years ago.
“When I saw what happened there my first thought was going back to July 1, 2015, when something similar happened on the west side of Columbus,” said Matt Bruning, press secretary for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT).
The tanker crash in Columbus was under a bridge for I-70. While it did not collapse, fire damaged it so badly that it needed to be replaced. The crash happened just days before Red, White and Boom and the holiday weekend.
“In this case for us it was we’ve got to get traffic crossed over the median, we have to build a road essentially to get people across the median over to the other bridge that had survived with no damage and back over into the correct lanes,” Bruning said.
The crash happened on a Wednesday. That process was done by Friday at noon, according to Bruning. He said he sees a lot of similarities between I-95 and I-70 as they’re both busy interstates for people and freight.
“There’s really no way you can say we’ve built a bridge that will withstand a tanker loaded with gasoline catching fire underneath it,” Bruning said about damage from fires in situations like this. “Unfortunately, there’s just not much you can do to prevent. What you do is try to react and react quickly. That’s what we did here in Ohio. I’m sure that’s what Pennsylvania is doing as well.”
ODOT originally predicted in 2015 the bridge would take about a month to replace. It took 20 days.