Enjoying the Beauty of the Day... Detroiter Style
I first heard about the accident while listening to 89X last night... Jay Hudson was just wrapping up the Top 9 @ 9... Just as the bridging tune was wrapping up, and another block of Rock was about to commence, he chimed in suddenly and rather dumbfound: "...There's an accident involving a tanker truck that's like... just a few miles from my house... Uh... 'looks pretty bad..." Not too long after, pictures from drivers halted on the freeway began popping up on Twitter. Then the story was everywhere else...
Details are still sketchy, and still buried under a huge pile of charred rubble... What is known is that around 8:30 last night (July 15th), an accident occured on Northbound I-75 just below the 9 Mile Road overpass involving a tanker truck carrying 14,000 gallons of gasoline. The truck crashed into another vehicle, overturned, and exploded. The extreme heat from the flames caused the overpass to collapse. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.
Watching the aftermath of the accident on the local news last night kept conjuring up memories of a "Top Ten Technological Disasters" program I once caught on the Discovery Channel when I was a kid. In this way, I guess I've sort of grown up to expect that stuff like this is bound to happen. But with each new face that appeared on the TV, the more I kept hearing those same seven words: "I've never seen anything like it before..." While this accident couldn't even come close to some of America's worst, the thing that made this particular disaster special for me was the fact that it was so close to home - just a mile and change.
In spite of all the noise from the choppers overhead, I still managed to sleep well that night, knowing full well that it was out of my hands. This morning I woke to find out with a sigh of relief that not one person had even been seriously injured... (perhaps with exception of the some 160,000 commuters that use the freeway each day, who will undoubtedly be bitching about this for months). It was a new day.
The day rose warm, dry, and sunny, with a steady and comforting breeze. I caught up with edhyena for lunch later in the day, and seeing as no one died, we were both in good spirits for checking out one mammoth of a wreck. Did I mention it was a beautiful day? After Ed and I parted ways, I took a detour home, quickly relieved my bladder, grabbed my camera and strode back to the scene. The icing on The Shit Cake for the state of Michigan as I affectionately like to think of it...
See that green thing with an apple on it? That used to be a Meijer produce truck. That smell you're smelling is well-done carrot kabob... Mmmmm...
The Tanker...
The Michigan Department of Transportation determined today that the remaining portion of the bridge, which had just been fully re-built in 2007, could not be salvaged, so a wrecking crew was brought in and put to work. Those guys operating those jackhammers on top of the very bridge that they are trying to tear down must have some serious sets of stones...
Meanwhile, this 2 mile stretch of I-75 between 8 Mile Road and I-696 is going to remain closed indefinitely. How surreal, the feeling of looking down from the Orchard Street pedestrian overpass on what would normally be a super-congested highway at just about any hour of the day (esp. at 5 o'clock "rush hour", as pictured above) and hearing nothing but the murmurs of nearby pedestrians coupled with the dissonance of jackhammers begrudgingly pounding away at charred steel and concrete.