This is what happened today. And please note I was on that bridge an hour before the incident, taking a fare to St. Clair Shores...
This was the scene about 9AM today at the Rouge River Bridge, at Exit 44 (Dearborn Ave.)... a tanker crashed through the guardrail and fell 30 to 40 feet right onto a house in the DelRay section. The house occupants got out with no injuries.
This stretch of northbound I-75 could be closed off for months - some structural damage to the bridge pylons was noted.
Witnesses reported a fireball stretching across all eight lanes of freeway, approximately 300 feet wide by 800 feet tall. It could be seen for miles.
These images are courtesy www.wwj.com.
One passenger today asked me how the tanker could have crashed through the guardrail so easily. According to witnesses, the tanker plowed through that guardrail without braking, which would give all that weight an additional 60 MPH boost (the tanker was loaded with liquid propane). Another big reason is the condition of the guardrail itself. It was remade in a reconstruction project 15 years or so ago. This means it's been through 15 Michigan winters (snow, ice, salt, repeat). Any type of water does damage to outdoor items long-term. And though the state of Michigan has spent a gazillion dollars over the past five years trying to re-do these roads, the Rouge River bridge has not been touched.
Not many people think about guardrails as being an important part of a bridge, but they are. And sorry to say, so many of them in Detroit are in worse condition than the pavement and bridge planking. You'll hear a story about twice a year about concrete chunks falling off viaducts and smacking cars underneath. Many of these concrete chips come from the guardrail itself, or the foundation supporting it. Plywood now covers up the bridge decking of many viaducts to keep the roadway from chunking onto the road, but the plywood can do nothing about the guardrails.
We used to poke fun of the Zilwaukee Bridge further upstate, about what an engineering disaster it started out to be. However, I think the Rouge Bridge is in even more of a dangerous state than Zilwaukee's was.
Don't worry; I scooted around the area on the trip back to St. Clair Shores, so I was never in any immediate danger.
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And yes, I AM back to work after two weeks off. The rest I got in those two weeks is getting used up in a hurry, however... though I've got over $200 cash to show for it. You take the tradeoffs when you can get them. And my new cab (#23) is a joy to drive; it runs better than my old cab (#20) ever did; and I made many compliments about how #20 was the best in fleet.
