Traffic snarled as workers begin removing I-95 overpass scorched in Connecticut fuel truck inferno

NORWALK, Conn. (AP) — Staff on Friday started eradicating a bridge over a Connecticut freeway that was broken in a fiery crash involving a gasoline tanker truck — a venture anticipated to maintain each side of Interstate 95 closed by way of the weekend and lengthen a site visitors nightmare on the most important artery linking New England and New York.

Crews took down steel fencing on the span in Norwalk earlier than a big excavator started demolishing the concrete sides of the construction. Heavy gear was introduced in in a single day. Gov. Ned Lamont stated the hope is to reopen the freeway by Monday morning.

Visitors on each side of the freeway was being corralled from three journey lanes into exit-only lanes as drivers had been detoured onto native streets across the crash web site. Livestreams confirmed automobiles and vehicles creeping slowly on the exit ramps. The state Division of Transportation stated the journey time was over an hour for the 16 miles (26 kilometers) from the New York border to Route 7 in Norwalk on I-95 north.

The crash occurred at round 5:30 a.m. Thursday on the southbound facet of the freeway. The tanker truck, carrying about 8,500 gallons (32,000 liters) of gasoline, burst into flames below the Fairfield Avenue bridge after a collision with a tractor trailer and a automobile. Officers stated nobody was critically injured. The reason for the wreck remained below investigation.

“The warmth from the burning gas compromised among the bridge, in order that bridge goes to have to come back down and that demolition goes to start out very first thing tomorrow morning,” Lamont stated at a briefing Thursday in Hartford.

About 160,000 automobiles journey that part of I-95 in each instructions day by day, officers stated.

Norwalk colleges had been closed Friday, and Mayor Harry Rilling urged native employers to contemplate permitting workers to work at home.

Textual content alerts had been despatched to residents of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, and trucking corporations who use the part of I-95 had been notified to search out various routes and technique of journey. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg stated in social media postings that federal freeway officers had been working with Connecticut authorities.

The crash considerably elevated site visitors on different highways and secondary roads. The main alternate route within the space, the Merritt Parkway, can’t be utilized by vehicles as a result of its underpasses are too low.

The accident was paying homage to a lethal one final 12 months in Philadelphia when a tractor-trailer carrying gasoline alongside I-95 misplaced management and caught fireplace, destroying a bit of the freeway.

Thursday’s crash additionally got here simply over a 12 months after an identical wreck on I-95 in Connecticut that additionally pressured the closure of the freeway. In that April 2023 crash, a gas truck caught fireplace after colliding with a stopped automobile on the Gold Star Memorial Bridge between New London and Groton. The gas truck driver was killed. The crash shut down the southbound facet of the bridge for hours, whereas the northbound facet was closed briefly. The driving force of the automobile was lately charged with negligent murder.