PHILADELPHIA — An elevated section of Interstate 95 collapsed early Sunday in Philadelphia after a tanker truck carrying flammable cargo caught fire, closing a heavily traveled segment of the East Coast’s main north-south highway indefinitely, authorities said.
Transportation officials warned of extensive delays and street closures and urged drivers to avoid the area in the city’s northeast corner. Officials said the tanker contained a petroleum product that may have been hundreds of gallons of gasoline. The fire took about an hour to get under control.
The northbound lanes of I-95 were gone and the southbound lanes were “compromised” by heat from the fire, said Derek Bowmer, battalion chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department. Runoff from the fire or perhaps broken gas lines caused explosions underground, he added.
Some kind of crash happened on a ramp underneath northbound I-95 around 6:15 a.m., said state Transportation Department spokesman Brad Rudolph, and the northbound section above the fire collapsed quickly.
The southbound lanes were heavily damaged, “and we are assessing that now,” Rudolph said.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, who said Sunday evening he planned to issue a disaster declaration Monday to speed federal funds, said at least one vehicle was still trapped beneath the collapsed roadway.
“We’re still working to identify any individual or individuals who may have been caught in the fire and the collapse,” he said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Video from the scene showed a massive concrete slab had fallen from I-95 onto the road below. Shapiro said his flight over the area showed “just remarkable devastation.”
The collapsed section of I-95 was part of a $212 million reconstruction project that wrapped up four years ago, Rudolph said. There was no immediate time frame for reopening the highway, but officials would consider “a fill-in situation or a temporary structure” to accelerate the effort, he said.
Motorists were sent on a 43-mile detour, which was going “better than it would do on a weekday,” Rudolph said. The fact that the collapse happened on a Sunday helped ease congestion, but he expected traffic “to back up significantly on all the detour areas.”
Pennsylvania Transportation Secretary Michael Carroll said the I-95 segment carries roughly 160,000 vehicles per day and was likely the busiest interstate in Pennsylvania
Shapiro said he had been spoken directly to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and had been assured that there would be “absolutely no delay” in getting federal funds quickly to rebuild what he called a “critical roadway” as safely and efficiently as possible.