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Topic: I-95 Shutdown/Philly/Sausage Sandwich (Read 397 times) |
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cynjeep89
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I-95 Shutdown/Philly/Sausage Sandwich
« on: Mar 17th, 2008, 10:56pm » |
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While listening to the local Philly news, I just heard that I-95 between Girard Avenue and Allegheny Avenue in both directions will be shut down in about 1/2 an hour. The timetable for this shutdown is supposed to be between 2-5 days
Seems a bridge inspector from Specialty Engineering had done an inspection of this section of the road back in October. By chance, he was back in the area today and wanted to take a second look at the crack in the column. He found a 2" by 4 foot long crack in one of the concrete support columns.
Anyone who is driving around this area pack some extra patience before you head out on the roads....it's gonna be a rough ride!
Sausage Sandwich Craving May Have Prevented I-95 Collapse
POSTED: 7:35 am EDT March 19, 2008
UPDATED: 8:04 pm EDT March 19, 2008
PHILADELPHIA -- A structural engineer's hankering for a hot sausage sandwich might have helped save Interstate 95 from collapse.
Peter Kim and his colleague Tony Jen, on their way back to their office after an inspection nearby, pulled off I-95 in the city's Port Richmond neighborhood for a late lunch Monday afternoon. After eating sausage sandwiches in their car, they were driving alongside the elevated highway when Kim spotted a huge crack in a concrete support column.
Kim, who works for a Bristol consulting firm named Specialty Engineering, took pictures of the cracked column with his cell phone and called PennDOT immediately.
The 6-foot crack in a 15-foot tall column led transportation officials to close a three-mile stretch of the highway within hours of Kim's discovery.
The interstate remained closed Wednesday morning as workers erected four steel towers to take the weight off the pillar and support the highway, which carries about 190,000 vehicles a day.
The roadway was expected to reopen once the towers were finished, a task expected to take at least until Wednesday night. Workers then will set about to repair or replace the damaged column.
Kim does contract work for the state Department of Transportation and had inspected the column twice in the last three years. Its condition had always been stable but he saw that it had dramatically changed since he last saw it in December.
His cell phone pictures show what the crack looked like when Kim spotted the problem.
"I was taken aback what we saw," Kim said.
Kim said he knew there was a serious problem and that it was only a matter of time before something serious would happen.
"Many days," Kim said of how long that could have taken. "I can't say for sure how many days, but it wasn't in danger of immediate collapse."
As a bridge inspector, Kim is constantly looking at structures, even casually, on his time off.
"I just felt like I was doing my job," said Kim, 40, of Horsham. "Definitely anybody who saw it would have reported it."
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| « Last Edit: Mar 19th, 2008, 10:39pm by cynjeep89 » |
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