Part of I-85 collapses in Atlanta after massive fire

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Gryphon66

Oh. I'm sorry. That sucks on so many levels.

Well, like Vasa said, it's not going to be that bad for me ... I work west of the City, so I'm scooting out the opposite way to commuter traffic.

But yeah. This ... there's no way to say how bad this is. Millions of dollars of lost time in the next few weeks.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I75 Northbound from FL-->WI in 2 weeks.

Should I look to avoid Atlanta altogether?

a reply to: Vasa Croe

Yeah...saw another, better pic.

a reply to: Macenroe82

OTP. And the rest was years ago. But thanks

originally posted by: SuperStudChuck
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I75 Northbound from FL-->WI in 2 weeks.

Should I look to avoid Atlanta altogether?

Use alternate route on waze and you'll be fine...avoid main arteries through downtown...ise the alternate route option.

Based off my experience with city of atlanta road crews, this will be 6 months of work.

Just sent out from the City of Atlanta...

From the Mayor's Office of Emergency Preparedness: Due to the I-85/Piedmont response effort, the City of Atlanta will have a delayed opening time of 10 a.m. If you have questions, please call 404-546-0311 between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Residents are encouraged to utilize MARTA and other commute options for travel within the city. We will share more details as they become available. Please allow additional travel times in the city as delays are expected.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

Forgot to tell you...GREAT SHOT! That may be the best shot I've seen of the fire.

This is going to be a serious mess. I-85 is a major, major artery.

I wanted to throw a little technical data in...

Steel/concrete: concrete is very susceptible to prolonged high heat. It will weaken tremendously, and actually turn to powder. Steel has a very high melting point, as previously mentioned, but it also tends to lose a lot of its strength when heated to below that melting point. Most steel/concrete structures are designed using composite design, which means the abilities of both materials together are used instead of one or the other. Steel/concrete are pretty symbiotic in that respect... you get the inflexibility of concrete combined with the strength of steel. If either begins to fail, the whole structure will quickly fail.

PVC/CPVC: both plastics are similar; polyvinyl chloride (PVC) essentially has a lower melting point than chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC). Neither is especially flammable with heat, but both will burn intensely if ignited by a flame. Since they contain chlorine, both will put off fumes containing chloride compounds... and almost all chemical compounds containing large proportions of chlorine are hazardous. Think hydrochloric acid (HCl), bleach, chloroform, and chlorine gas (a major ingredient of mustard gas).

Bottom line: the heat needed to collapse the bridge that way had to be extreme and prolonged. CPVC, as reported, can provide such heat. But CPVC (as with almost any plastic) would not spontaneously combust. There had to have been an ignition flame, and it would have to have been substantially more than just a spark. Also, if this was caused by burning PVC/CPVC, the fumes would be highly toxic, although not overly persistent. The magnitude and appearance of the smoke, in my experience, is consistent with burning PVC/CPVC, although it is also consistent with many other types of combustibles.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
This is going to be a serious mess. I-85 is a major, major artery.

I wanted to throw a little technical data in...

Steel/concrete: concrete is very susceptible to prolonged high heat. It will weaken tremendously, and actually turn to powder. Steel has a very high melting point, as previously mentioned, but it also tends to lose a lot of its strength when heated to below that melting point. Most steel/concrete structures are designed using composite design, which means the abilities of both materials together are used instead of one or the other. Steel/concrete are pretty symbiotic in that respect... you get the inflexibility of concrete combined with the strength of steel. If either begins to fail, the whole structure will quickly fail.

PVC/CPVC: both plastics are similar; polyvinyl chloride (PVC) essentially has a lower melting point than chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC). Neither is especially flammable with heat, but both will burn intensely if ignited by a flame. Since they contain chlorine, both will put off fumes containing chloride compounds... and almost all chemical compounds containing large proportions of chlorine are hazardous. Think hydrochloric acid (HCl), bleach, chloroform, and chlorine gas (a major ingredient of mustard gas).

Bottom line: the heat needed to collapse the bridge that way had to be extreme and prolonged. CPVC, as reported, can provide such heat. But CPVC (as with almost any plastic) would not spontaneously combust. There had to have been an ignition flame, and it would have to have been substantially more than just a spark. Also, if this was caused by burning PVC/CPVC, the fumes would be highly toxic, although not overly persistent. The magnitude and appearance of the smoke, in my experience, is consistent with burning PVC/CPVC, although it is also consistent with many other types of combustibles.

TheRedneck

Well then....that was a refreshingly insightful post.

It has my mind wandering a bit more into conspiracy now.

I wonder how long those spools of pipe were under that bridge. Was this a planned act of arson by someone that knew what you just posted? If so, was it planned by the City to cause an incident in order for something else to happen or project to be postponed because of some budget mishap? Or was it simply city employee that was part of the crew that put these spools there, had the knowledge you have, happens to be an arsonist and decided to wreak havoc on the City in a manner that will literally cripple travel here for a while?

Anywho...cant wait to hear what they say the cause is....

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

Forgot to tell you...GREAT SHOT! That may be the best shot I've seen of the fire.

It had to be a terrorist attack. (Sarcasm) Using 9/11 conspiracy logic, the black smoke means the fire is oxygen starved. Oxygen starved means the fire was not hot enough to cause collapse... more sarcasm.


I do hope nobody gets hurt, and they can get the road way fixed as quick as possible.

a reply to: kosmicjack
bridges don't just burst into flame. and how many electrical wires have to be bundled there to generate that much fire.

a reply to: kosmicjack

The type of foam being used would probably be suggestive of the type of fire being dealt with. It is unlikely that the fire would have been fought with foam, unless some sort of flammable liquid were involved though, so its probably best to start with the tentative assumption, that the fire involved a liquid fuel of some sort, or that the material being burned created potentially flammable/explosive gasses.

The report said that some utility conduit or something, was laid out under the overpass, for use in some sort of construction. It is possible that these reels of plastic tubing being burned, created a flammable vapour, which necessitated the use of a foam retardant, but more data would be required to confirm that.

In any case, I would have thought that if terrorism was a possibility here, the first media organisation to jump on that, would have been the permanently rabid assortment of filth that is the Fox News organisation. Since they make no such suggestion in the linked article, I wonder where the idea sprung from?

originally posted by: PlasticWizard

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

Remember an electrical fire in a small plastic box caused this..

Not buying that at all unless that box was made out of jet fuel.

Why? Something similar happened to Route 78 in New Jersey almost 30 years ago. A bunch of old tires were stored under an overpass near Liberty Airport and they caught fire and buckled several of the steel beams in the outer roadway.

Route 78 Fire

a reply to: kosmicjack

I can only imagine the difficulty with traffic going forward after this collapse on I85.

Confirmed damage to the South bound section of I-85 as well. So, both directions of 85, through the heart of Atlanta closed, indefinitely.

Crews are still putting out hot-spots at the scene. There is gridlock all over the city. 400 South bound closed, being diverted at Sidney Marcus. Buford-Spring Connector closed due to too much volume as people desperately try to come up with a plan B to get around.

a reply to: RogueWater

There are still 6 lanes standing on the other side of the bridge.
The bottleneck at the merge points shouldn't be too bad by Monday if there was no structural damage on that side of the bridge.

It happened to I-75 in Flint MI many years ago. A tanker truck went up underneath the overpass. Would have been in the 70's sometime

originally posted by: proteus33
a reply to: kosmicjack
bridges don't just burst into flame. and how many electrical wires have to be bundled there to generate that much fire.

It was supposedly a "secure" storage area for construction materials, under the interstate. So, if it is an accident, some jackass made the call to store highly-flammable materials under a bridge in a major American city listed as having some of the worst traffic in the world.

That smoke smells like lawsuits.

a reply to: kosmicjack

I work in Buckhead but luckily I come in from 75 and West Paces. I'm sure traffic will be a nightmare locally for months and I'm sure that 75/285 will pick up a lot of the slack. 85 south to 285 west to 75 south to the connector heading south and vice-versa heading north. The new stadium will only make matters worse...

a reply to: Cauliflower


Not an option now, too damaged.