Roads are not fireproof

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Gene

Early this morning, a gasoline tanker truck crashed and exploded on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge. The resulting fire collapsed the freeway and closed two interstates.

And I couldn’t help but think: first, that whole tanker full of gas burned up at a time when the Bay Area is seeing prices of about $3.60 per gallon.
But second, I started to stress about the strength of freeway flyovers. A crashed truck, albeit loaded with gas, managed to melt the steel supports within the concrete and collapse a huge freeway bridge. It is a bit scary to think that fire can bring down huge concrete and steel structures; witness the World Trade Center.
Coincidentally, one of my personal phobias — one that intensified after September 11 — is being under things like freeway flyovers. For instance, if I am stuck in traffic and come up to a flyover bridge, I will generally wait just outside the underpass until traffic allows me to move all the way through. I try to avoid stopping underneath one.
I really hate driving over them as well; there are more flyovers here in the Bay Area than there are back home in DC (although the new Springfield Interchange is towering and terrifying, I successfully avoided it for the last year or so that I lived there) but I stick to surface streets and avoid the freeways.
One truck crash brought down two major interstates. What happens in the next earthquake, I wonder?