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| The big fire that collapsed a major Interstate 85 bridge in Atlanta Thursday. |
In case you haven't seen the news, a major Interstate highway caught fire in Atlanta, Georgia Thursday and the spectacular blaze caused a bridge to collapse.
Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt, but I didn't know Interstate highways could burn.
They're saying there was a lot of PVC piping under the bridges and road bed, and that's what burned. I guess PVC was inexpensive and efficient, but in hindsight, maybe not the best material in the world.
Here's the trouble: Atlanta is the Los Angeles of the South in terms of highways. The Atlanta metro area is laced with freeways, all of them congested most of the time.
The Interstate 85 fire, including the bridge collapse, is going to be a stunner.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has wisely declared a state of emergency, since nobody is going to get anywhere in the Atlanta area until this is fixed. You can imagine the economic impacts.
Plus, you can't rebuild a major Interstate bridge in an urban area in a day. It's going to take a lot of time.
I also love and am frightened by this detail of the fire from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The fire was near a bunch of popular adult entertainment businesses, which had to close because of the dense smoke hanging over the region. The fire was also near the headquarters of the Orkin pesticide company.
Lovely.
Politicians from Donald Trump on down keep saying we have to sink a lot of investments into infrastructure, but they never do it.
This weird fire is one indication that maybe all these leaders should put their money - or, more accurately, taxpayer money - where their mouths are.
I wouldn't mind seeing some of my tax money going toward road construction instead of the president's golf trips, no?
Videos:
There were some technical hiccups with this news chopper view of the Interstate 85 bridge collapsing in Atlanta, but it's still pretty dramatic:
A brief, scary view of driving by the raging fire:
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