After a fiery crash in November between a jackknifed semi and another truck carrying a load of caustic potassium hydroxide (aka lye) resulted in major damage and the subsequent more-than-month-long closure of the Brent Spence Bridge — the City of Covington said the collision created an “instantaneous fireball” between the chemicals and the truck’s diesel fuel — many have been asking: “What can we do to prevent this from happening again?”
Well, apparently there’s already a regulation on the books banning hazardous materials from crossing the Brent Spence — it just isn’t widely publicized or enforced.
Officials with the City of Covington want to change that. They say the crash and closure should be a “wake-up call.”
The existing hazardous materials ban was approved by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and went into effect July 15, 2013. But the city says, “Recent news of its existence came as a surprise to public safety and local government officials, and existing highway signs even appear to contradict it.”
“One regulation designated Interstate 71/75 north of Interstate 275 in Kentucky as a ‘restricted hazardous material’ route,” reads a release from the city. “The other regulation diverted northbound trucks onto I-275 eastbound so as to avoid the bridge and the Lytle Tunnel in Cincinnati. An existing sign in Kentucky tells truckers carrying hazardous materials to avoid I-71, which runs through the Lytle Tunnel. Another sign directs hazmat carriers to use I-75, in apparent violation of the ban.”
To remedy the situation, the Covington Board of Commissioners passed a resolution this week declaring the bridge needs to have better signage and that trucks carrying hazardous materials need to be redirected. The commissioners also said that the ban needs to be enforced.
“Each day that the ban on transporting hazardous materials north of the Interstate 275 interchange is not enforced creates a heightened risk to the citizens of Covington due to the typical interstate traffic being re-routed through Covington along state and local roads,” reads the resolution. “And…similarly, each day the ban is not enforced creates a heightened threat to the movement of interstate commerce and traffic.”
Although state officials have said the amount of lye the truck was carrying wasn’t enough to trigger the hazardous ban, the city really wants to focus on preventing more catastrophes in the future.
“It could have been a whole lot worse,” said Covington Mayor Joe Meyer in the release. “We were very lucky, so the question becomes, very simply, why take the risk?”
Meyer says Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray has heard the city’s request and says the state is receptive.
“It has been just an extraordinarily disruptive and difficult circumstance for the people and businesses of our community,” Meyer said of the bridge closure.
The Brent Spence is a major artery connecting Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky and sees “160,000 to 180,000 vehicles a day, not to mention an estimated 3 percent of the gross domestic product” cross its expanse, says the City of Covington. And although it has been labeled as “functionally obsolete” — because it was never intended to carry that much traffic and it has no emergency breakdown lanes— KYTC’s Gray says the bridge will reopen on schedule, and safely, by Dec. 23.
“I said from the beginning there would be no cutting corners on this project,” Gray said during a press briefing about bridge repair progress. “Folks on this project knew that we had to repair the bridge, and bring it back to a condition which was safe and sturdy and solid. And that is exactly what has been done.”
Gray says the full repairs are expected to come in at less than the $12 million emergency funding allotted for the project.
Read about the Brent Spence Bridge repairs and process at brentspencerepair.com.
And read the City of Covington’s full hazardous materials resolution below.
This article appears in The Holiday Issue.