I recently reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday after a massive fire erupted at a storage yard, shutting down Interstate 10, one of the busiest freeways in downtown Los Angeles.
Arson is suspected as the cause of the blaze, which severely damaged a bridge. The intensity of the fire was enhanced when the pallets of flammable hand sanitizer that were being stored there ignited. The bridge was also the site of a large homeless encampment. Initially, the best case estimates would be that the bridge would be reopened within 3-5 weeks.
However, residents of Los Angeles caught a couple of lucky breaks. The bridge did not need to be demolished.
“This is not a demo operation. This is a repair operation,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday. …”We’re going to do everything in our power to move that into the more immediate future and not extend this to that five-week period,” the governor told reporters Tuesday near the mile-long site of the interstate closure between Alameda Street and the East Los Angeles Interchange.The major L.A. traffic corridor, which carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles everyday, will reopen sooner than expected after engineers analyzed core samples taken from the freeway.
It looks like the bridge will reopen November 21st.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the fire-damaged 10 Freeway would reopen sooner than expected — Tuesday “at the latest.”“Five lanes in both directions,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday evening at the site of the fire in downtown Los Angeles.More than 100 columns along the swath of the freeway were damaged — nine or 10 of them severely, officials said. Construction crews have erected wooden structures to shore up the overpass while the repair work gets underway.“By Tuesday next week, trucks, passenger vehicles in both directions will be moving again,” Newsom said. “We’ve doubled the crews, we’ve doubled down on our efforts here.”
Of course, tax dollars from citizens living in the rest of the nation are being used to fix a problem caused by California’s failure to deal with the homelessness issue, which may have been a contributing factor to this incident.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has announced the immediate availability of $3 million in “quick release” Emergency Relief (ER) funds for use by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to offset costs of emergency repair work on a section of Interstate 10 near downtown Los Angeles damaged by a fire that took place under the interstate and resulted in a closure in both directions….Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt joined state and local officials at the site earlier this week and reiterated the U.S. Department of Transportation’s commitment to provide federal assistance and support to help Caltrans make repairs expeditiously.“We know the I-10 corridor is a critical connection for both people and goods traveling in and around Los Angeles,” Bhatt said. “The quick release funding we’re providing Caltrans is the first of many steps we are taking to help California get this key route open as soon as possible for the workers, residents and businesses that rely on this route every day.”
There have been no further updates related to the arson investigation. But Californians have thoughts.
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