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Dive brief:
- A heavily traveled section of Interstate 10 damaged by a fire last week in Los Angeles will reopen Tuesday, before the Thanksgiving holiday, and not for three to five weeks as previously estimated.
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom made the announcement Thursday that with emergency crews working 24 hours a day, the California DOT, or Caltrans, determined that the five Traffic lanes in both directions can safely reopen to passenger and commercial truck traffic next week.
- “The state is on track to open on the 10th before millions of Angelenos hit the road for Thanksgiving,” Newsom said in a statement. “I’m grateful to the crews working around the clock to safely repair the 10 so we can move Los Angeles traffic in days instead of weeks.”
Diving knowledge:
News of the earlier opening comes after officials initially thought the 450-foot section of the elevated freeway, where roughly 100 columns were damaged by an intense fire that started in a storage yard below the ‘ella on November 11, should be overthrown.
But Newsom dropped that possibility Tuesday, saying the The highway could reopen in three to five weeks after tests of core samples showed that the damage was not as extensive as it appeared. The New York Times amusingly captured that shifting timeline with the headline: “Surprise! The Los Angeles Freeway will reopen next week, according to Newsom.“
Although the highway, which serves as a vital artery for cargo shipments from the nearby ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, will reopen next week, repairs and construction will likely continue at the site for months, said the governor’s office
Caltrans workers are also taking advantage of the traffic-free opportunity over the next few days to conduct a “swarm” maintenance operation: sweeping, repairing bridge railings and broken concrete, painting over graffiti, cleaning drains and culverts, removing trash , weeds and weeds. vegetation and sealing of broken access doors.
In June, a tanker truck truck that caught fire under I-95 in Philadelphia led to a similar shutdown. While initial estimates for the repair schedule there spanned months, the section also reopened ahead of schedule, in about two weeks.
