An elevated section of Interstate 95 has collapsed in Philadelphia after a tanker truck carrying flammable cargo caught fire, closing part of the east coast’s main north-south highway indefinitely.
Transport officials warned of extensive delays and street closures and urged drivers to avoid the area in the north-east corner of the city.
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 on to 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. R
Some kind of crash happened on a ramp underneath northbound I-95 at around 6.15am. 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 rear-view mirror come to a halt. Soon after, the northbound lanes of the highway crumbled.
“It was crazy timing,” Mr 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”, Mr Rudolph said on Sunday afternoon.
The collapsed section of I-95 was part of a 212 million dollar reconstruction project that wrapped up four years ago, Mr Rudolph said.
There was no immediate timeframe for reopening the highway but officials would consider “a fill-in situation or a temporary structure” to accelerate the effort, he said.
Motorists were sent on a 43-mile detour, which was going “better than it would do on a weekday”, Mr 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”.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he was in contact with city and state leaders, and the Federal Highway Administration asked surrounding states to alert drivers.
“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,” Mr Buttigieg said in a social media post. “Our department will be there with support throughout the process of I-95 returning to normal.”
The fire was strikingly similar to another blaze in Philadelphia in March 1996, when an illegal tyre dump under I-95 caught fire, melting guard rails and buckling the pavement.
The motorway 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 three million (£2.4 million) of the 6.5 million US dollar (£5.2 million) repair costs, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
More recently, in Atlanta, a massive fire collapsed an elevated portion of Interstate 85, shutting down the heavily travelled 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 the state transportation department’s storing of combustible construction materials under the motorway increased the risk of fire.
