Really unnecessary fire closes biggest LA freeway interchange

[ZoWie]

The vast highway interchange complex between the I-10 and several other major freeways just south of Downtown LA is closed indefinitely. This is going to be yet another economic catastrophe for a city that seems to have more than its share.

KTLA:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/10-fre ... -shutdown/

The blaze forced officials to close the freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue in both directions and prompted several interchanges to be shut down.

The following closures will remain in place until further notice:

Northbound 5 Freeway to westbound 10 Freeway
Southbound 5 Freeway to westbound 10 Freeway
Westbound 60 Freeway to westbound 10 Freeway
The westbound 10 Freeway on-ramp at Soto Street
The eastbound 10 Freeway on-ramp at Alameda Street
The westbound 10 Freeway on-ramp at Santa Fe Avenue

For those who have never attempted a morning commute in LA, this means essentially, forget about getting around the whole middle of the city any time soon.

This is one of those perfect LA fubars. The state owns the land under the freeway. They leased it to a company, which sub-leased it to another company, which stored hundreds of wooden pallets on it. Dry, flammable, wooden pallets, stacked 20 feet high. Acres of them.

They caught fire. They burned like the homecoming bonfires that are popular this time of year. Very photogenic.

Probable cause is listed as "rubbish." Usually in LA, "rubbish" means that the homeless were trying to stay warm, and something caught fire that shouldn't have.

They can't even get under there to inspect the road. From the outside, it looks very bad. Concrete has fallen off, exposing rebar, and guard rails have melted. It is not known yet whether or not the entire interchange will have to be rebuilt, which would take years, as in cancel the Olympics.

Once again, one can only marvel at the utter ungovernability of this miserable place.

[ap215]

Here's a few pics what a disaster.

[gounion]

Let's remember how quickly Boston was able to rebuild an Interstate Highway in just 12 days last year.

Ya never know. I'm an optimist.

[ZoWie]

LA ignores problems like 45,000 homeless living in the street lighting fires to stay warm in November, or letting some bozo store a bazillion pallets and who knows what other flammable crap under a key highway, then it's boo hoo hoo time when something catastrophic happens.

Something of a fundamental disconnect here.

[gounion]

LA ignores problems like 45,000 homeless living in the street lighting fires to stay warm in November, or letting some bozo store a bazillion pallets and who knows what other flammable crap under a key highway, then it's boo hoo hoo time when something catastrophic happens.

Something of a fundamental disconnect here.

Agreed.

[ZoWie]

Additional facts come out:

1. It is illegal in LA to store flammable materials under highways. The sub-leaser was in violation of the law. They had said they intended to park cars there.

2. The major lessee was behind on rent, having itself been stiffed by the sub-lessee. The matter has been tied up in court for quite some time.

3. Investigation has shown that the cause of the fire was arson.

[ZoWie]

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... geles-fire

Although the exact cause of the fire has not been revealed, “there was [malicious] intent,” Newsom said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

Later

Officials said the property where the fire broke out was being leased by Calabasas-based Apex Development Inc., which was subleasing the storage site under the overpass without permission from state and federal agencies. The company stopped paying rent, according to Newsom, and had been out of compliance with its lease agreement.

[Number6]

Hopefully, the L.A. mayor has directed all city employees to note any illegal storage or piles of material throughout the city and has a central office that will be responsible for taking action on it.

[ZoWie]

The mayor of LA has no real political power. It's not like New York, where the mayor's office is actually a major source of policy. Policy in LA comes from an undersized and catastrophically overworked city council which is slowed down even more by the need to keep translating things in and out of Spanish. City Hall is a policy sink. It's where good (and bad) ideas go to die.

The policy regarding land under freeways is not a simple one. The major player is actually the state, but the feds and the city have policy input too. Given that the dominant policy in any LA affairs is essentially forced by the city's archaic charter to be benign neglect, the city really doesn't have the control of what happens under the highways that keep the place from imploding.

The state lost control by not maintaining the proper watch on the people who had been given leases to use the land under the freeways for parking, storage, etc. Given that something like 1/4 of the land in downtown LA is dedicated to the proper moving of automobiles (thank you General Motors), this gets non-trivial in a hurry. Of course, like everything else here, the situation is complicated by the absolutely staggering homelessness issue, which seems to be insoluble.

The actual situation with the current disaster under the current freeway interchange seems to have been caused by too many cooks and too little control by those we elect to execute policy. What else is new in LA?

[ZoWie]

You really need a score card to tell the players, but here's an LA times clip with a look at what we're up against. Essentially, we see anarchy, with the usual host of grifters, swindlers, undocumented immigrants trying to get by, and authorities that don't enforce the law. People say one thing and do something else, and half the time it's in Spanish. Everyone's just trying to make a buck, and the law is irrelevant.

The photo is especially demonstrative of the chaos that is LA. Note the truckload of spilled oranges to the right of the chaotic debris that was apparently involved in the fire. Oranges? WTF? (WTF is a common question in LA.)

This whole affair is going to enrich a whole lot of lawyers.

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... d-caltrans

The property was one of five that Caltrans was attempting to evict Apex and another Nowaid company from, including a plot along the 5 Freeway in Sun Valley and another a block away from the fire. All told, Nowaid owed about $620,000 to Caltrans in unpaid rent as of September, the agency said in court filings.

Caltrans alleges that Nowaid’s firm secured leases of government-owned property with a host of restrictions, then turned around and broke the leases by illegally subletting to various businesses, including a tow company, a recycling firm, mechanics, a tree-trimming outfit and a trucking firm.

The lease for the land where the fire occurred said the property could be used only for parking operable vehicles and “open storage”; other uses required the approval of Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration, something the company does not appear to have secured. Nor was Apex supposed to allow the storage of inoperable vehicles, flammable materials or other hazards.

[Motor City]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixe5w8exMvM

10 Fwy in DTLA will not be demolished, expected to reopen within 3-5 weeks

The fire-damaged portion of the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles will not need to be demolished, and at least some lanes are expected to reopen within a matter of weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

100 columns damaged, 9 or 10 severely.

[gounion]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixe5w8exMvM



100 columns damaged, 9 or 10 severely.

Modern construction technology, remember how quickly the damaged road in Boston was repaired.

[ZoWie]

I wasn't going to say anything until the experts examined the damage, but it's true that LA has gotten pretty good at rebuilding freeways that look like they've had it. After the earthquake one whole section of the 10 freeway collapsed, and they had it back in a few months.

The biggest problems are when gasoline tankers hit the columns and explode. This happens more than random chance would suggest. I don't know why this is. Just not lucky, I guess. One stretch of the 101 freeway was something like a year being rebuilt, though they did it in stages so some of the freeway was open sooner.

[ZoWie]

I didn't believe it when I heard it the first time, but now it's being confirmed all over the place that the freeway will be safe to drive on in a few weeks, not months.

There will, of course, be more of this kind of thing if the mess regarding the state's leasing of space under highways isn't cleaned up. The fire should never have happened. The whole situation was beyond fubar, it was anarchy.

[Number6]

I-10 will reopen on Monday, Nov 20.

Interstate 10 in Los Angeles is expected to reopen Monday following a fire that closed one of the busiest highways in the country, officials said.

"Tomorrow, the commute is back on," Vice President Kamala Harris said during a Sunday press conference alongside California Gov. Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass and local officials.

More work must be done on the freeway overnight before it can be reopened on Monday morning, officials told reporters in a news conference Sunday morning.

A 250-person crew is currently working 24 hours a day at the site to shore up damaged pillars and replace wood posts and steel beams, the California Department of Transportation said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/i-10- ... 5713&ei=45

I've got to give kudos to CALTRANS for accomplishing this.

[ZoWie]

Amazing work done here. I'm impressed.

[ZoWie]

Turns out that I should be impressed mostly by how fast things happen when there's political power at stake. LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... way-in-l-a

The mile-long section of the freeway between Alameda Street and the East Los Angeles interchange is now shored up with wooden posts and steel beams, which officials said will allow the overpass to open to traffic while crews work to repair damaged concrete columns and the upper deck.

With a surge of holiday traffic expected through a freeway corridor that averages about 300,000 commuters a day, the message was clear from the beginning, said the Caltrans engineer who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity:

“Go faster. The political heat is on.”

[ZoWie]

Caltrans, of course, is the agency that is most in the line of fire, due to its colossal lapse of control over who it leased its land under highways to.