Remember last June, when a highway bridge on I-95 in Tacony collapsed in a fiery disaster that threatened to halt commerce and transport along the East Coast, and sent big rigs on detours through surrounding residential neighborhoods?
And then when the rebuilding process was the hottest must-watch, must-meme livestream in town?
Remember the hoagiemouth guy? The foam glass backfill? The reopening after just 12 days? Gov. Josh Shapiro launching his “I fixed the highway really fast” presidential campaign platform? (Ok, that last one didn’t actually happen. At least not officially.)
It all came back to us in a bittersweet rush on Thursday, when PennDOT held one last ceremony to announce that permanent repairs to the roadway were finally, truly, totally complete, and that, weather permitting, all lanes in the area would be open — as well as a lane on a new ramp to Cottman Avenue — just in time for holiday weekend travel.
Let’s relive it one more time, shall we? Here are some of the highlights, and low-lights, of the I-95 bridge collapse of 2023.
Fears of a months-long closure
On Sunday, June 11, a petroleum tanker being driven by 53-year-old Nathan Moody for Pennsauken-based TK Transport tipped over and exploded beneath an overpass, where I-95 travels over the curving off ramp at Exit 30.
Moody died, but remarkably, no one else was injured in the fire and subsequent bridge collapse. Philly’s sports teams later announced a $50,000 fund for Moody’s daughter.
Officials said they weren’t sure how long it would take to remove and temporarily rebuild the burned-out stretch of road. Shapiro initially said it could take months, then upgraded his prediction to a couple weeks.
SEPTA saw jumps in ridership on four Regional Rail lines the following week, and there were fears of a regional traffic nightmare. A subsequent analysis found there were some short-term increases in travel times but no traffic crisis as people avoided driving or switched to public transit.
“We lost the Super Bowl, now we lost I-95”
What were you doing when the crash happened?
“I was passed out,” Northeast Philly resident Peter McLaughlin memorably told a TV crew.
So were a lot of people, but only McLaughlin went viral thanks to his perfect “hoagiemouth” Philly accent.
“I woke up to nothing but text messages, phone calls, I had no idea what was going on,” he told Fox29 reporter Marcus Espinoza, smiling from beneath a thick mustache. “Everybody’s like ‘yo, where’s this at?’ … I was like, ‘bro, that’s right by my apartment.’”
He was also interviewed by CBS — “Philly’s been taking Ls,” he lamented. “We lost the World Series, we lost the Super Bowl, now we lost I-95” — and became an instant meme.
“This guy should be named the official Philly accent ambassador,” one of his many appreciative viewers wrote on Twitter/X.
A presidential order and another meme
Reopening the road quickly became a practically sacred mission for Shapiro and the union workers tasked with the job.
“Rain won’t stop us, wind won’t stop us,” said Ryan Boyer, business manager for the Philadelphia Building Trades. “Without it being an act of God, you’ll see construction workers here every day, all day.”
The governor signed a disaster proclamation freeing up $7 million in state funds for the reconstruction, and Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle announced $3 million in federal emergency funding.
President Joe Biden toured the site by helicopter and pledged to reimburse the state 100% for the first part of the reconstruction, and 90% after that.
“I’ve directed my team…to move heaven and earth to get this done as soon as humanly possible,” Biden said. “There’s no more important project right now in the country as far as I’m concerned.”
The state set up a livestream of the construction site, which quickly became another meme.
“Imagine if you will,” wrote @Dex_Appeal on Twitter/X, “drinking twisted teas with the boys outside, watching I-95 be reconstructed.”
Foamed glass from Delco saves the day
Within a few days workers had cleared out the damaged roadway and began laying foamed glass aggregate as a backfill for a new, temporary roadway surface.
Foamed glass is made by grinding recycled glass bottles into a powder, which then undergoes cleaning, filtering, foaming, and heating processes, per The Inquirer.
It’s been used for decades in Europe but is “brand new technology” in the U.S., said Archie Filshill, CEO of Aero Aggregates North America, the Delaware County company that produced the foam glass for I-95.
The same type of “ultralight” aggregate was already under other parts of I-95 and other roadways, and an airplane parking lot at Philadelphia International, Filshill told Billy Penn. It was also under the Starbucks kiosk next to Philadelphia City Hall, where it was added to reduce the structure’s pressure on a subway tunnel below.
The governor takes a victory lap
On June 25, just two weeks after the collapse, Shapiro — accompanied by fire trucks, mascots from all five major sports teams, union workers, TikTok influencers, McLaughlin (now dubbed the “Mayor of Mayfair”), Mayor Jim Kenney and Biden (by phone) — held a ceremony on the highway to announce its reopening.
In a statement, Biden cited the “grit and determination of operating engineers, laborers, cement finishers, carpenters, teamsters, and so many other proud union workers doing shifts around the clock” for the job well done.
Shapiro, meanwhile, proclaimed, “We can get sh*t done,” and has kept reminding us about it ever since. (“Nearly one year in, my Administration has gotten a lot of stuff done for the good people of Pennsylvania,” he said in a December press release. “We reopened I-95 in just 12 days.”)
“Pennsylvania can do big things”
With traffic speeding along on three temporary lanes in each direction, the excitement over the project soon faded.
But work to permanently reconstruct the highway continued. In August, steel beams were installed on the outer edges of the partly-rebuilt roadway.
In November, new outer lanes were completed and traffic was shifted away from the temporary center lanes, which in the following months were replaced by a permanent road surface.
On Thursday, PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll, Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt, and other officials held a ceremony to mark the project’s completion.
“Today serves as another example to all that Pennsylvania can do big things,” Carroll said. “Thanks to the dedication of the workers and incredible coordination between the Shapiro administration, our federal partners, and the city of Philadelphia, traffic flowed freely on I-95 throughout construction and we were able to restore the roadway to full capacity less than a year after the tragic fire and collapse.”
