TL;DR: a portion of I-95 in Philadelphia collapses from a tanker fire
Back in 2017, a portion of I-85 in Atlanta collapsed when a homeless guy set a couch on fire, the fire spread and ignited a bunch of flammable shit underneath a bridge, and then the bridge collapsed. I-85 had a gaping interruption that caused a tremendous amount of logistical issues for everyone who needed the major vein, and was only fixed as quickly as it was because of more or less, a reward bounty being put on the completion of time of the repair.
It was still months slower than the Japanese repairing a sinkhole the size of a lake, but in the time in which it occurred, Atlanta became the butt of bad jokes, memes and all sorts of opportunity for people to dunk on us, because for some reason, Atlanta is an easy punching bag for all the unfunny comedians on the internet.
Welp, the shoe is on the other foot now, and what we have here is an extremely similar situation, happened in another major city. I-95 is obviously one of the most essential veins not just in Philadelphia, but across the entire eastern seaboard, so the impact of it being collapsed in Philly is about similar if not worse than Atlanta’s highway collapse.
I can’t say that I care enough to check, but I would be curious to see if Philly gets the same types of criticism, ridicule and memes poking fun at their situation as Atlanta did, or if, by virtue of not being Atlanta, Philly gets off easier than things were here.
Frankly, all government doesn’t do shit jokes aside, at this point, I’m curious how this could have even happened after the debacle in Atlanta. I don’t work in a DOT or anything, but I would’ve thought that routine checking of structural integrity and examination of bridge construction probably should’ve leveled up at least a hair after Atlanta. Sure, highways are meant to be resilient structures meant to support millions of cars and pounds of weight crossing over them endlessly, but come on now, fire shouldn’t be disintegrating bridges.
Someone somewhere in the PA DOT wasn’t doing their job, and for their troubles, they alleviate Atlanta from their own embarrassing bridge collapse, and I hope they pay the internet price of criticism and ridicule the same way we did here.
