Back in 1996, a fire in a tire dump located underneath an overpass of I95 caused structural collapse
TOO HOT TO HANDLE? In 1996, a tire fire in an illegal dump buckled three spans of the 26-span, 1,707-foot-long Westmoreland Viaduct between Westmoreland Street and Tioga Street. The resulting closures affected traffic as far north as central New Jersey (it was even reported on traffic updates from New York radio stations), and as far south as Wilmington. Immediately, temporary spans were constructed to carry I-95 traffic. Within weeks, PennDOT replaced the three simple-girder spans.For five weeks during the summer of 1998, traffic along I-95 was disrupted once again, this time following a fiery crash that damaged the bridge over Chester Creek near the Pennsylvania-Delaware border. At the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, a tanker truck loaded with 8,700 gallons of gasoline swerved to avoid a passing car, crashed across a concrete barrier and exploded after striking a pickup truck. The driver of the tanker truck and the pickup truck were both killed in the crash.
PennDOT found nine steel support girders, each girder six feet, eight inches tall and between 65 and 80 feet long, under the southbound lanes of the bridge that were damaged in the fire. During the five-week-long, $3.5 million reconstruction project, four lanes of I-95 traffic (two lanes in each direction) were shifted onto the undamaged northbound lanes. All six lanes of the Chester Creek bridge - three northbound and three southbound - were reopened in time for the Independence Day weekend.
No doubt a fire as intense as you describe would damage or cause buckling but the question is with these accidents did it cause a total symmetrical failure?
Good example. Each time I hear one of these nitwits say "the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel, Steel melts at blah blah, the fire burns at blah blah", they seem to gloss over that it didn't need to melt. In 2001 on Rt 80 in NJ, a similar incident occured...bridge was out for months.
1996, 2001, 2004 bridges melted with burning Fuel Oil which burns at a temp very close to Jet fuel. This doesn't even include other stuff in the towers that caught fire.