That explosion caused so much damage, it looks like deliberate sabotage.
Matching this map with the nice picture in Post #8 above, it looks like the ramp connecting 80 westbound to 880 southbound collapsed onto the ramp connecting 80 eastbound to 580 westbound.
This is relatively good news.
The bottom ramp, 80 east to 580 west, should be able to be reopened fairly soon, I would hope, once the debris is cleared away, if it did not suffer serious structural damage. This ramp is the major evening traffic flow for commuters returning from San Francisco to much of the east bay (Oakland and most of Alameda county).
The top ramp is a flaming disaster and no doubt will take months to rebuild. But it is one of the least traveled paths through this maze, for travelers going south along the east side of the Bay, from Berkeley and points north, to Hayward and Fremont and points south. And the 980 freeway, a few miles to the east, can offload much of this traffic.
But for the next few weeks, until the 80 east to 580 east ramp is cleared, the evening commute out of San Francisco is going to be a bitch.
Flaming wreckage ping
ping!
Tanker driver killed in crash took illegal shortcut
Fiery crash that killed him occurred after he drove load of fuel inside 610
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
The tanker-truck driver who died in an explosive crash in northeast Houston early Friday morning, causing a two-month closure of part of one of Houston's major interchanges, had taken a shortcut that violates a city ordinance.
"He was in a zone where he shouldn't have been," said HPD officer David Mireles, who worked the scene early Friday morning. "He was cutting in through the zone, as far as regulating hazardous materials."
Houston's ordinance prohibits the transportation of hazardous materials inside Loop 610, unless a driver is picking up from or delivering cargo to a company inside the Loop, Mireles said.
Luis Perez, 39, who for two months had been a driver for a Bay City company that officials have not yet identified, had just picked up a full or nearly full load of about 3,400 gallons of diesel and about 4,600 gallons of gasoline from a pump station on Houston's northeast side, outside the Loop, police said.
Perez, who apparently was not from Houston but moved to the Spring Branch area recently, was delivering to a convenience store in Liberty County, police said.
Mireles said Perez picked up the fuel at the pump station near Cavalcade and U.S. 59 North at 11:45 p.m. Thursday. He traveled south on U.S. 59 North, drove past Loop 610, thereby violating the ordinance, and shortly after midnight attempted the relatively sharp interchange to I-10 East, Mireles said.
End snip......
Hm...
Charlie “I-have-nothing-between-my-ears” Sheen will purport this to be a controlled collapse.
Rosie “I-am-not-an-engineer-even-though-I-know-everything-about-everything” O’Donnell will declare it to be bombs.
Stating the obvious, this would be an incredibly useful way for terrorists to take out our highway systems.
Ping!
