Rescue workers pulled a body from the wreckage Monday of the tanker truck fire beneath an Interstate 95 overpass in Philadelphia.
The grim discovery came as demolition crews prepared to dismantle part of the southbound lanes after the fiery tanker blast on Sunday caused a section on the northbound side of the heavily-traveled highway to collapse.
Police have not identified the victim and when asked at a press conference whether this was the driver, Pennsylvania State Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll said “I will defer to the medical examiner for comment on that.”
The order to demolish the lanes came after inspectors discovered that the support beams that hold up the southbound lanes had been severely weakened by Sunday’s explosion, which police said happened after the driver of an 8,500-gallon-capacity tanker truck apparently lost control while trying to negotiate a curve on the exit ramp and slammed into a wall beneath the interstate. Officials have been referring to this overpass as a bridge.
“The engineering and the inspection of the southbound bridge indicated it’s compromised as a result of the fire,” Carroll said. “The I-beams are incapable of supporting the traffic and so that structure has to be removed and we’ll be starting today.”
Contractors hired by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will be working around the clock “in an effort to try and speed up the solution,” Carroll added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has already warned that it could take months to repair this key stretch of highway that links the East Coast’s two largest cities, New York City and Philadelphia, and which carries roughly 160,000 vehicles a day.
“We expect that demolition to be completed in four or five days,” Carroll said.
So far police have not identified the driver. He was transporting a shipment of fuel to a local Wawa gas station and had just exited the ramp from I-95 North to Cottman Avenue, which goes underneath the highway when the tanker exploded.
Nor have police divulged whether the driver was killed by the blast or by the 500 tons of concrete, steel and rubble that rained down on the truck following the explosion.
Asked whether this now-wrecked section of highway had recently been inspected, Carroll said “the bridge was just fine before the accident.”
In fact, this overpass had been refurbished about seven years ago, one of the nation’s leading civil engineers told NBC News.
“This bridge was rated good by the Pennsylvania DOT and it recently had a major rehabilitation in 2016,” said Andrew Herrmann, past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “The likeliest cause for the collapse here is intense heat. That’s what the investigators are likely focusing on.”
Herrmann said highway overpasses made of concrete and steel appear to be non-flammable but they are “susceptible to high heat.”
“The temperature from a fire of this type could reach 2000 degrees,” Herrmann said. “The steel girders carrying the bridge can lose 50 percent of its strength at 1100 degrees. Similarly concrete can lose 50 percent of its strength at 950 degrees. This loss of strength can cause sagging and collapse of the structure.”
Asked whether this portion of the highway will be rebuilt the same way, Carroll said at the press conference that they are “looking at all the options.”
Herrmann, however, said this overpass met AASHTO (American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials ) standards and this design is used on highways around the country.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
