A portion of the 10 freeway in Downtown Los Angeles — between Alameda Street and the East LA interchange — is indefinitely closed after a fire broke out early Saturday in the pallet yard underneath it. This section of the highway was built in 1957, and an estimated 300,000 drivers pass through it daily. There’s currently no timeline for a reopening.
“One of the fire trucks was destroyed during the firefighting process. And while they were able to get this under control and put the fire out, even by Saturday midday, it was just already clear how serious of an event this was and that there would be long-lasting pain for Angelenos who use that freeway,” says Daniel Miller, enterprise reporter for the LA Times.
CalTrans owns the burned property beneath the freeway that is reportedly being subleased. According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, there’s ongoing litigation around the lessee, and the name of the company involved remains undisclosed.
Newsom declared a state of emergency, which allows agencies to work together to determine what it’ll take to reopen the 10.
“We don't yet know whether the section of the freeway can be salvaged and repaired, or whether it needs to be fully demolished. Obviously, that's one of the big questions in the days ahead,” says Miller.
During the weekend press conference, officials invoked the Northridge earthquake and its damage to the local freeway system. “It seemed to me that they were planting the seed that this could be a months-long process. As we know, there were many freeways that were severely damaged during the 1994 quake, and this is just a section of one freeway. But to me, it's suggested that Angelenos should prepare for the worst.”
As drivers try bypassing the closure through alternate routes, surface streets are more congested, including in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights.
As of noon Monday, the cleanup of the hazardous site is complete, and engineers are working around the clock to determine what they can do with the existing freeway, Miller notes.
“Hopefully in the days ahead, there's some clarity in terms of how long people can expect to have this problem.”
