PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Offering no word yet on how much it will cost to rebuild I-95 through Northeast Philadelphia, or how long it might take, PennDOT and Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Thursday evening that the demolition phase of the project is complete.
With demolition completed — days ahead of projections, said Shaprio, though no timeline has been shared with the public — crews will now begin construction of a temporary roadway. State officials vow those crews, under the watchful gaze of a PennDOT webcam since Wednesday morning, will work around the clock to reopen the corridor.
First, a Philadelphia-based contractor will begin to build six lanes of traffic, three in each direction, to reopen I-95 to cars and trucks. Then, with traffic flowing again, construction will begin on the permanent replacement to that stretch of highway.
For now, detours continue. Southbound drivers can take I-95 as far as Exit 30 (Cottman Avenue). Northbound drivers can go as far as Exit 26 (Betsy Ross Bridge/Aramingo Avenue).
Repairing the corridor will likely take months, but Abi Aghayere, a Drexel University professor of structural engineering, says it should be a pretty straightforward project.
“You have the concrete on top of the steel there, on top of the steel girders. What's going to take time is fabricating those steel girders. Because the bridge itself is more than 100 feet long. So those steel girders are welded in the shop and brought to the site.”
Aghayere says the steel beams supporting I-95 were exposed underneath.
“In a house or in buildings, we protect the steel. We cover up the steel. If there was a fire above the bridge, the concrete will help protect the steel girders themselves,” Aghayere said.
When truck driver Nate Moody’s tanker crashed, the resulting fire, consuming over 8,000 gallons of gasoline from the tanker, got hot enough to take the exposed steel to its melting point, more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
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“Whether it's concrete, wood or steel, the fire is going to impact the strength of the structure,” Aghayere said.
“Once it heats up, the part that heats up the most, wherever that truck was, the intensity of the heat must have been concentrated and focused at a certain location along the beam, and that is going to weaken. When that weakens, that portion reduces in strength considerably. What happens now — it hinges at that point.”
Stress above the steel girders, the weight of the overpass itself, caused the structure to fail.
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