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Dive Brief:
- The fire-damaged portion of I-10 in Los Angeles could reopen in three to five weeks, California officials said in a Press conference Tuesday.
- Governor Gavin Newsom had declared a state of emergency on Saturday and he undertook to repair as soon as possible the 10-lane-wide, 450-foot section of the elevated highway supported by about 100 pillars. The span, which is part of a major freight artery, remains closed indefinitely.
- By the early hours of Tuesday morning, securing had begun on the damaged columns and trucks had begun removing the debris from the site, Newsom said during the news conference. Engineers also tested samples from the site that led officials to conclude that demolition would not be necessary.
Dive Insight:
Photos of the collapse showed fires and crushed columns under the bridge deck, as well as twisted guardrails deformed by fire that started in a warehouse under the roadway, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Newsom said the state took legal action months ago to evict the space’s tenant, Apex Development Inc., a Southern California construction company, for not paying rent and violating its lease agreement by subletting the property without state and federal approval. . Apex Development did not immediately respond to Construction Dive’s request for comment on Tuesday.
Newsom’s office said the emergency declaration will facilitate cleanup and repair work on the highway. The governor’s order also directed Caltrans, California’s transportation department, to formally request assistance through the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Assistance Program if needed. Shailen Blatt, FHWA administrator, toured the site Monday.
About 300,000 vehicles a day pass through the span, a vital link for the flow of cargo in and out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. These ports handled more than a third of loaded import containers nationwide in the first eight months of 2023, according to data collected by Supply Chain Dive. The Associated Press reported that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the effects of the fire.
Newsom called the damage “substantially greaterfrom a section of Interstate 95 that collapsed on the East Coast in June after a tanker truck caught fire underneath it, according to CNN. While that repair was eventually completed in two weeks at a cost of between $25 million and $30 million, officials in Los Angeles on Monday did not provide a timeline or cost estimate for fixing the pavement. The Associated Press reported that damage from a 2011 fire caused by a fuel tanker on State Route 60 east of Los Angeles took six months to repair at a cost of $40 million.
In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the Minister of Transport Pete Buttigieg pledged the support of the federal governmentsaying the US Department of Transportation “will help in any way we can.”
Edwin Lopez contributed to this story.