LOS ANGELES (CN) — Officials announced Wednesday that all hazardous materials have been cleared from the 10 Freeway east of downtown Los Angeles, giving Caltrans full access to the repair site.
The 10 Freeway — or Interstate 10, as out-of-towners are likely to call it — is one the busiest freeways in Southern California, a main artery that connects the Inland Empire to the Pacific coast, cutting through much of West LA, which includes an outsized proportion of jobs in the area.
A massive fire broke out on Saturday underneath the 10, damaging more than 100 concrete columns along a 450-foot span. Officials announced that they believe the cause of the fire was arson, though it was fueled in part by wooden pallets stored under the freeway and sanitizer lotion being kept nearby. A number of small businesses operated underneath the freeway, on land that was apparently leased by the state Department of Transportation and the subleased to businessmen, mostly immigrants.
A two-mile section of the freeway has been shut down, and added burden to what is already a crushing commute for tens of thousands of Angelenos.
Initially, the mayor and the governor said the freeway would be closed "indefinitely," perhaps for six months or more. Many worried a section would have to be torn down and rebuilt. But damage to the freeway's columns turned out to be less severe than first feared and officials now say the closure will last between three and five weeks.
Clearing away the charred debris from underneath the 10, including rusted cars and scrap metal, was the crucial first step. Outside contractors hired by the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, worked 24 hours a day to safely remove "approximately 264,000 cubic square feet of hazardous material and debris — enough to roughly fill four Olympic-sized pools," officials said in a statement. A Caltrans official called it a "Herculean task."
"This critical, ahead-of-schedule milestone helps us safely get Los Angeles’ traffic moving in December," said Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement.
In the meantime, LA Mayor Karen Bass has been urging Angelenos to take public transit to ease the traffic crush in and around Downtown.
"Metro ridership on the E Line increased 10% yesterday," Bass said in a statement of her own. "People are taking public transportation, telecommuting, and paying attention to our message about using the other freeways for detours. With rain expected, we will continue to operate with absolute urgency to get the job done.”
Mayor Bass has taken a number of measures to improve transit in the area, directing the LA Department of Transportation to assist Metro in speeding up the E Line, which runs parallel to the 10. The line runs 22 miles from East LA to within a few blocks from the Santa Monica pier. The train can excruciatingly slow at times, especially as it cuts a curved path through downtown.
Bass also directed the department to make most buses free and increase the number of Metrolink trains, the commuter line that runs from San Bernardino to Union Station, the main train hub in downtown.
Freeway shutdowns are seen as near-cataclysmic in Los Angeles. Sections of a number of freeways, including the 10 and the 5, collapsed during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. It was later deemed a defining moment for then-mayor Richard Riordan who, like Bass, had been on the job for less than a year. Riordan earned high marks for taking over certain aspects of traffic control and freeway repair, which still took months.
Bass has been keen to show the same sense of urgency, holding twice-daily press briefings on both the traffic congestion and the repair progress. On Wednesday morning, she herself rode the E Line to work.
"It’s the best way to beat the traffic downtown as we work urgently to get the 10 repaired," she cheerfully tweeted.
Newsom, too, has been eager to show he's taking charge, proclaiming a state of emergency on Saturday to speed up the response, citing "conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property." On Wednesday afternoon, he announced that he'd secured $3 million in "quick-release emergency funding" from the Biden administration to offset the initial repair costs.
“This segment of I-10 is a vital corridor in our interstate highway system, and it’s important to hundreds of thousands of commuters as well as to America’s supply chains that it be quickly repaired,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a written statement.
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