Report: Driver lost control of gas tanker
PHILADELPHIA — The driver of a tractor-trailer hauling gasoline lost control on an off-ramp and flipped the tanker truck on its side in a wreck that set it afire and destroyed a section of the East Coast’s main north-south highway, Pennsylvania’s top transportation official said Monday.
In the first official accounting of a wreck that threw hundreds of thousands of morning commutes into chaos and disrupted untold numbers of businesses, state Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll said the driver was northbound “trying to navigate the curve, lost control of the vehicle, landed on its side and ruptured the tank.”
As a result, Interstate 95 will be closed in both directions for weeks at the start of summer travel season. The elevated southbound portion of I-95 will have to be demolished, as well as the northbound side, Carroll said. Motorists should avoid the northeast corner of the sixth-largest city in the country, transportation officials said.
The driver was feared dead, and a relative of a New Jersey truck driver who has not been heard from since Sunday told The Philadelphia Inquirer that investigators had contacted the family in an effort to identify human remains recovered from the wreckage.
Pennsylvania State Police said a body was turned over to the Philadelphia medical examiner and coroner, but did not identify the remains or respond when asked if they belonged to the driver.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, speaking of those on the roadway and not the trucker, said he “found myself thanking the Lord that no motorists who were on I-95 were injured or died.”
The accident also disrupted the automotive route from Canada to Florida through the Boston, New York and Washington metropolitan areas, increasing Americans’ dependence on air travel and on the interstate rail network.
Videos shared on social media showed a number of close calls around the accident, with people driving through the area as flames licked upward from the fire below.
The National Transportation Safety Board was on the scene Sunday night. Federal investigators have been collecting information about the truck and talking with the company and emergency responders to understand the sequence of events. They are expected to make a preliminary report within weeks.
Carroll said the damaged I-95 segment carries about 160,000 vehicles daily. State police don’t know if the driver was speeding and no other vehicle has been found. Officials said they had been in contact with the trucking company, but they did not identify it.
Carroll said the highway span was 10 to 12 years old, had appeared sound and he blamed the damage on the heat of the fire, which took about an hour to control.
Shapiro signed a disaster declaration Monday, saying it gives state agencies the ability to skip normal bidding and contracting requirements so the span can be repaired faster.
He said a flight he took over the area showed “just remarkable devastation.”
High heat from the fire or the impact of an explosion could have weakened the steel beams supporting the overpass, according to Drexel University structural engineering Professor Abi Aghayere. Bridges like the one that collapsed don’t typically have fire protection, like concrete casing, he added. It could have been coated in a fire-retarding paint, but even then the beams could have been weakened.
“It just gives you time,” he said.
Among many transportation changes across the region, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority said it was operating three extra morning and late afternoon trains on its Trenton, N.J., line, and adding capacity to regularly scheduled lines during peak hours after the collapse.
The collapsed section of I-95 was part of a $212 million reconstruction project that wrapped up four years ago, state Transportation Department spokesman Brad Rudolph said. PennDOT rated the 104-foot span as in “good” condition earlier this year, with another inspection set for 2025.
Shapiro, a Democrat, said the complete rebuild of I-95 would take “some number of months,” and in the meantime, officials were looking at “interim solutions to reconnect I-95 and get traffic through the area.”
Joseph L. Schofer, a retired professor of civil and environmental engineering from Northwestern University, said a big challenge for PennDOT in quickly replacing the bridge could be getting heavy-duty steel beams of 100 feet or more.