A body was found under the collapsed section of I-95 in Philadelphia
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Drivers in Philadelphia have to find their way around a closed section of interstate highway this morning. A section of I-95 collapsed after a tanker truck caught fire under an overpass. NPR's Joe Hernandez takes us there.
JOE HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: A police officer directs traffic in the Torresdale neighborhood of Philadelphia. It's where drivers like Bob Rudden are being diverted off I-95 and onto city streets. Rudden is pretty optimistic about the traffic so far.
BOB RUDDEN: Not bad at all yet.
HERNANDEZ: But this week?
RUDDEN: Well, this weekend, it's going to be hell when they all go down the shore.
HERNANDEZ: Troy Laypo (ph) was on his way to a Phillies game when he got detoured.
TROY LAYPO: I mean, 95 is always under construction, but never like this, for sure. This is insane (laughter).
HERNANDEZ: It took authorities about an hour to extinguish the tanker truck fire. The extreme heat scorched the highway and caused all of the elevated northbound lanes to cave in on the road below. The southbound lanes were heavily damaged. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro says he surveyed the site from above.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOSH SHAPIRO: Remarkable devastation. And I found myself, you know, thanking the Lord that no motorists who were on I-95 were injured or died. Just a remarkably devastating sight.
HERNANDEZ: I-95 runs from Maine to Florida. And this section of interstate sees about 160,000 vehicles per day. Shapiro says the damage won't be fixed for months. A similar highway collapse in Atlanta in 2017 took six weeks to repair. In the meantime, the area's transit agency, SEPTA, is adding more cars per train to its regional rail lines serving the area. Leslie Richards is SEPTA's general manager.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LESLIE RICHARDS: We are all going to need some extra patience in the coming days. Please work with us as we work through this.
HERNANDEZ: The incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Pennsylvania State Police.
Joe Hernandez, NPR News, Philadelphia.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEEB'S "FLUID DYNAMICS")
Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.