Wapsi Square Forum

...and it just became a HELL of a lot worse - and the effects on the economy of most of the eastern US is likely to be pretty damned serious, too.

Interstate 85 - at least the northbound, and probably the southbound lanes - is closed indefinitely in Atlanta, by a bridge collapse caused by a fire under the bridge.





Also Piedmont and Lindbergh avenues are closed, and it looks as if this may affect Georgia 400, another major commuter route.

And it happened at afternoon rush hour, when most of the traffic in that area would have been northbound.

Amazingly, nobody was killed or even really injured.

Closed "indefinitely", because thy need to assess just how much damage the still-standing part of the overpass sustained before they can even begin to figure out how to rebuild.

WXIA-TV wrote: Atlantans already suffered through the fourth-worst traffic in America and the ninth worst in the world, Inrix, a global transportation research firm, reported last year. But the impact of the collapse is likely to be felt for some time across the Southeast.

I-85 is one of the busiest freeways in the eastern half of the country, carrying vehicles almost 700 miles from southern Alabama through Virginia. It is an important commercial throughway for trucks making deliveries to businesses and warehouses not only in Atlanta but also in other major commercial centers like Montgomery, Alabama, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

DeKalb County schools are closed Friday.

Updates:

The construction materials stored under the bridge belonged to the state Department of Transportation. The DoT says they weren't flammable. I think further materials testing is in order.

Three (apparently) homeless people have been arrested for starting the fire. Kind of makes sense, because homeless people tend to live under bridges, and homeless people tend to start campfires.

Three segments of the elevated roadway on both the northbound and southbound sides will have to be replaced.

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A story: Thirty-some years ago (during an extended dry spell, when cigarette butts tossed out of cars were starting fires on the shoulders and medians) a freight train was running along the line that crosses Piedmont Avenue and the Interstate in the same area.

For a mile or so, the tracks run in a cut, and then along the edge of Piedmont Park

Unknown to the crew, it had a hotbox. (Modern roller-bearing trucks don't have "journal boxes", which the term "hotbox" originall referred to, but lubrication failure can cause the same basic effect.)


{That's an old-fashioned truck; the cover on the journal box could be opened to add oil/grease to the saturated fiber inside the box that made up the "friction bearing". Roller bearing truck axles come through the truck frame with no bok; you can watch them rotate)

It started a fire on the car it was on.

Before anyone noticed the burning freight car (it was a small fire), it had started brushfires along a couple of miles of track in the area...

The AFD was not happy with the Southern Railway.

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Map attached, just for the hell of it. (there's a scale at the bottom for some sense of distances.)

The red line traces the Southern Rwy (now Norfolk Southern RR) line from Virginia-highlands at the bottom (roughly where the grease fire in the truck began) to where they stopped the train and put it out. actually

The green circle is the area of I-85 directly affected by the fire - the purple arrow points to the place where the northbound side of the elevated highway collapsed (the lanes to the right of the Interstate at that point are a ground-level frontage road/feeder). The green arrow points to the MARTA trainyard that can be seen in the background of some shots of the fire on the news and online.

The RED arrow points to the location of a southbound segment that will have to be replaced - which spans Piedmont Road.

People who don't live in Atlanta have likely heard of Peachtree Street/Road/Industrial Boulevard (all one road that changes names).

People who don't live here may have heard of Ponce de Leon Ave.

You may NOT have heard of Piedmont Avenue/Road.
Well, ranking the three thoroughfares in order of importance to mobility and commerce, Piedmont belongs second in the list. And not THAT far behind Peachtree.

As a matter of fact, i'd rather endure closures of Peachtree though Midtown and Buckhead than similar closures of Piedmont.

And oh hey, look at that, one of the largest Christian churches in the US uses that very exit for most of their traffic.

APD and AFD are going to be having huge headaches for a while.

jwhouk wrote:And oh hey, look at that, one of the largest Christian churches in the US uses that very exit for most of their traffic.

APD and AFD are going to be having huge headaches for a while.

I didn't know that. Which?

Regarding hot boxes and burning railroad stuff, near my home was a 3/4 mile long 4 track switch yard. It extended between two major city bridges and one exit was a three way split to cross the river, go north, or go south. The side tracks were mainly for parking and clearing the main line through it, rather than building whole trains.

Well, the day came when they decided to replace the ties on the main track, so the circus train dumped a metric sh*tload of fresh cresote dipped wooden ties for the length of the yard on the nearest siding for the installation. This was before automated track/tie laying machine cars.

And of course, some twit managed to set it on fire one night.

A dozen fire departments managed to set up shop between the houses and businesses that backed the yard, save both bridges, and stop it before it got the entrance of the three way mainline split. No injuries as I recall, but a half mile long creosote fire stinks for miles, and remains stinky for several rains.

The railroad now had to replace the mainline ties and two burnt sidings, plus heat stressed rails. What a deal.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

jwhouk wrote:And oh hey, look at that, one of the largest Christian churches in the US uses that very exit for most of their traffic.

APD and AFD are going to be having huge headaches for a while.

I didn't know that. Which?

Passion City Church. Louie Gigilo's church.

jwhouk wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

jwhouk wrote:And oh hey, look at that, one of the largest Christian churches in the US uses that very exit for most of their traffic.

APD and AFD are going to be having huge headaches for a while.

I didn't know that. Which?

Passion City Church. Louie Gigilo's church.

Which is right above the green circle, on the map. I don't know of that church, but I presumed that was the church you meant, seeing at it was so close to the portion of the highway affected...

lake_wrangler wrote:

jwhouk wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote: I didn't know that. Which?

Passion City Church. Louie Gigilo's church.

Which is right above the green circle, on the map. I don't know of that church, but I presumed that was the church you meant, seeing at it was so close to the portion of the highway affected...

I think it's new since i lived inside the Perimeter - which was eighteen years ago.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: I think it's new since i lived inside the Perimeter - which was eighteen years ago.

Yeah. Founded 2009.

What that doesn't show is that the distance between the two exits to 285 from I-20 are 16 miles apart.

And that the distance of I-75 from downtown Atlanta out to 285 is about 12 miles.

Oh, and there's this thing at that interchange between 75 and 285? Just opened up this week? Something called "SunTrust Field"?

Yeppers.

It lies about distances almost as much as the London Underground Journey Planner.

And... things in Atlanta just got worse.

Another freeway (I-20, westbound) is out of service.

It's... The Underminer!

Atomic wrote:It's... The Underminer!

Nah... just a case of aging American infrastructure with a really, really bad case of intestinal gas.

Heat expansion buckling, i suspect.

Somewhere on YouTube there's a video of some poor sucker doing sixty or seventy on an Interstate that has just buckled like that and doing un unplanned jump...

Further info:

A section of westbound Interstate 20 in Atlanta is closed after a section of the roadway bulged up from the ground and launched a motorcycle rider into the air.

The DeKalb County Police initially said an underground gas leak caused the “defect” in the roadway in the southeast part of the city.

Fire officials later said crews were pumping concrete into old, abandoned gas lines under the freeway and there was some sort of malfunction that caused a build-up of air pressure. The air pressure eventually caused the ground under the roadway to surge upward.

Officials with the DeKalb County Fire Rescue confirmed that the driver of a motorcycle hit the huge bump and was launched into the air. Officials say the motorcycle came to a stop about 200 feet from the bulge in the highway.

The motorcycle rider was hospitalized in critical condition after the crash, fire officials said.

{story - that's all there is, though.}

The only thing wrong with that image, is that the caption should have used an old German typescript font.

Fraktur, of course.