Around 6:15 a.m. on Sunday, June 11, 2023, a tanker truck came to grief on a ramp beneath Interstate 95 in northeast Philadelphia and went up in flames. Within minutes the four-lane northbound overpass above it gave way.
No one on the highway was hurt. Mark Fusetti, a retired Philadelphia police sergeant, was driving south toward the airport when he spotted thick black smoke. As he passed the fire, he told the Associated Press, the road under him began to “dip.” In his mirror he saw traffic stop. Then the northbound lanes crumbled behind him.
The truck’s driver did not survive. The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office later identified him as Nathan Moody and ruled his death an accident.
A road that thousands of families depend on
Pennsylvania Transportation Secretary Michael Carroll said the stretch carries roughly 160,000 vehicles per day and was likely the busiest interstate in the state. For people in Tacony and the neighborhoods around it, that meant a Sunday morning of loud blasts. Residents told reporters they heard several explosions, which fire officials linked to fuel runoff or burst underground gas mains.
The fire brought down a road that officials said was in good shape. State transportation spokesman Brad Rudolph said the section was part of a $212 million reconstruction that finished four years earlier, and PennDOT had rated the 104-foot span as good earlier in the year.
Drivers were pointed to a 43-mile (69-kilometer) detour. Rudolph said it was moving “better than it would do on a weekday”, but he warned that traffic would “back up significantly on all the detour areas” once the work week began. Philadelphia’s managing director, Tumar Alexander, put it bluntly: “I-95 will be impacted for a long time… a long time.”
Cost to commuters and freight
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the site on the Tuesday after the collapse. He said truckers now had to take longer and pricier routes, and he expected “upward pressure” on costs along the East Coast. For anyone who buys goods that travel that corridor, that is a price that eventually reaches the shelf. Buttigieg called the road “a key artery for the movement of people and goods.”
Environmental worries came fast. A sheen appeared in the nearby Delaware River, and the Coast Guard put out a boom. Ensign Josh Ledoux said the tanker held 8,500 gallons, but the contents did not appear to be spreading.
The plan to reopen
Gov. Josh Shapiro first warned that a full rebuild would take “several months.” On Wednesday, June 14, he laid out a faster interim fix. Philadelphia contractor Buckley & Company would fill the gap with lightweight backfill, which Carroll described as a recycled glass-type product, and pave over it. That would restore three lanes in each direction while the state builds a permanent bridge.
Officials gave no date. They did point to earlier repairs for comparison. A highway ramp in Oakland, California, was replaced in 26 days, and Interstate 85 in Atlanta took 43 days after a fire in March 2017. Philadelphia has its own precedent: a 1996 blaze under I-95, set in an illegal tire dump, closed the road for weeks and left partial closures lasting six months.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to investigate the tanker fire and the collapse.
Sources
- US: Philadelphia bridge collapse closes major interstate
- I-95 rebuilding in Philadelphia: Officials unveil plan to repair highway, but decline questions on timeline
- WATCH: Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro gives news briefing on I-95 overpass collapse (Associated Press, via PBS News)
