[spokeshave]

“For the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible,” she said.

.....Ecxcept for the gas tanker that rolled over on a bay bridge interchance near Oakland CA a few years ago......

Tanker Fire Causes Ca. Highway Collapse

April 29, 2007 / 12:36 PM / CBS/AP

A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said.

Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

"I've never seen anything like it," Officer Trent Cross of the California Highway Patrol said of the crumpled interchange. "I'm looking at this thinking, 'Wow, no one died — that's amazing. It's just very fortunate."

[spokeshave]

The fire melted a second interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound I-580 located above the first interchange, causing a 250-yard section of the roadway to collapse onto the roadway below, according to the highway patrol.

Witnesses reported flames from the blaze reached up to 200 feet high.

Late Sunday morning, the charred section of collapsed freeway was draped at a sharp angle onto the highway beneath, exposing a web of twisted metal beneath the concrete.

[Axenolith]

For the record, I was headed into the city to metal detect and passed adjacent to that through the “maze” commenting to my buddy “I’ll probably be down there on Monday”.

I was, and subsequently saw the bridge steel, which looked like taffy in the worst parts, stored at the bridge maintenance facility.