Posted on 03/30/2017 5:40:45 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE
A oil or chemical fire, perhaps in a rail car under the I85 bridge in downtown Atlanta between I75 ,400, and I85 caused a section of I85 to collapse 1 hour ago. Traffic is expected to stopped for weeks until the elevated highway section is replaced.
Interesting twitter feed. The fire looked too big to try and get it with a fire extinguisher with those two cops outside the fence - but I wonder how long they had been there, etc. It doesn’t take long for fires to grow though - dangerous.
Good find.
Don't know, but this sort of thing happened recently in Oakland California, on the eastern side of the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge linking I-80 exchange with several other interstate highways. Big tanker burned under multilevel overpasses and collapsed them. California CalTrans thought it would take half a year to fix it, governor hired a private contractor who said he could rebuild it in one month, and he did so, getting traffic moving within a month. It was an amazing feat out here.
Braves Home Opening April 14th. Hopefully by then people will have a better sense of alternate routes & new travel times from Point A to Suntrust Park.
That’s the photo I was referring to in my post 61. I don’t know. The fire seems controlled to one stack of spools, with a little running involved and each guy with a fire extinguisher it would have been at least worth a try, and assess things as you are getting closer. Of course you don’t know if it was arson, and the guy placed 10 containers of gas nearby.
I think the first people on the scene had no idea how much damage the heat from the fire would cause. I wouldn’t have thought that the stuff there even if it all caught on fire would have heated the elevated highway enough to cause the collapse. But it did.
On the radio an engineer here said 4-5 months. If the foundations are weakened then the latter.
Longer than that. These state ‘employees’ love their overtime. Lots of leaning on shovels and smoking.
From the look of it, I think that’s fiber optic conduit, not actual lightguide cables. You bury and join the conduits, then pull the actual fiber optic cables / lightguide through.
A technical detail. Lots of BTUs in all that plastic, is the key point.
That looks like the actual F.O. cable, and not the F.O. conduit in the Google Maps street view pic linked earlier.
We were shopping for a house in the old part of Alpharetta about 18 years ago. The realtor explained that the houses tnereabouts were built “after the war.” Having lived in the high growth post-WW II California suburbs, I thought she was referring to WW II as well. Didn’t take long to figure out she meant an earlier war. Different perspectives! We didn’t move.
Non-sequitur, it turns out.
Still not clear on the conveyance, but not at all rail. Barrels or piping.
I-285 is the Pascual Perez Loop, isn’t it?
Difference from DTW and ATL is the Woodward bridge goes over 696. This is part of the expressway that will have to be rebuilt. For 696 they probably demolished the bridge remnants over the course of a few days and your orange barrels caused the delays. This will require a detour of that area and will be a living hell for those of us that live here and especially those that drive for their job. A normal afternoon commute for me to the far northern burbs takes me at least an hour once I get on 75. I shudder at how long it’s going to take me tomorrow, my last appt is at 5 in dunwoody, not too far from the mess and super close to a daily traffic mess in the afternoon.
They failed because the invisible UV lasers from the MotherShip #19 cut those welds!
/s
Channel 2 is reporting 6 mths for repair.
No they failed when they were hammered by the load of the above floor hitting them. Show me a pic of the columns with intact floor truss brackets still attached.
285 will be swamped as it now becomes the main artery through Atlanta.
Maybe in the off hours but not during rush hour. 285 West is under construction and the interchange is already screwed up. Couple this with the new Braves stadium and the first Exhibition game of the year tomorrow and it’s going to be a nightmare.
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