Big Connecticut Highway Will Be Closed for Days

Workers on Friday began removing a bridge over a Connecticut highway that was damaged in a fiery crash involving a gasoline tanker truck—a project expected to keep both sides of Interstate 95 closed through the weekend and extend a traffic nightmare on the major artery linking New England and New York. Crews took down metal fencing on the span in Norwalk before a large excavator began demolishing the concrete sides of the structure. Heavy equipment was brought in overnight. Gov. Ned Lamont said the hope is to reopen the highway by Monday morning, the AP reports.

• The crash happened at around 5:30am Thursday on the southbound side of the highway. The tanker truck, carrying about 8,500 gallons of gas, burst into flames under the Fairfield Avenue bridge after a collision with a tractor trailer and a car. Officials said no one was seriously injured. The cause of the wreck is under investigation.

• Traffic on both sides of the highway was being corralled from three travel lanes into exit-only lanes as drivers were detoured onto local streets around the crash site. Livestreams showed cars and trucks creeping slowly on the exit ramps. The state Department of Transportation said the travel time was over an hour for the 16 miles from the New York border to Route 7 in Norwalk on I-95 north.
• "The heat from the burning fuel compromised some of the bridge, so that bridge is going to have to come down," Lamont said at a briefing Thursday. About 160,000 vehicles travel that section of I-95 in both directions daily, officials said. Norwalk schools were closed Friday, and Mayor Harry Rilling urged local employers to consider allowing employees to work from home.
• Text alerts were sent to residents of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, and trucking companies who use the section of I-95 were notified to find alternative routes and means of travel. The major alternate route in the area, the Merritt Parkway, cannot be used by trucks because its underpasses are too low.
• Thursday's crash came just over a year after a similar wreck on I-95 in Connecticut that also forced the closure of the highway. In that April 2023 crash, a fuel truck caught fire after colliding with a stopped car on the Gold Star Memorial Bridge between New London and Groton. The truck driver was killed.

(More interstate 95 stories.)