Lanes have reopened in the Prudential Tunnel after concrete debris fell from the tunnel’s ceiling onto passing vehicles Friday, an incident that the state’s top highway authority calls “rare.”
The incident happened Friday afternoon on the westbound side of Interstate 90 inside the Prudential Tunnel, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Two lanes were temporarily closed as a result of the fallen debris.
The concrete debris fell in the middle and left lanes, according to WCVB.
“It’s not something that happens very often,” Johnathan Gulliver, the highway administrator for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “Thankfully we do have a very robust program to make sure that we try to address these issues as they happen.”
Gulliver said the piece of concrete was about 4- to 5-feet long, a size large enough “to cause some damage.” Nobody was hurt in this incident, but the vehicles affected were damaged.
Gulliver said the concrete was not a structural part of the tunnel. It was debris dislodged from a bridge joint — a gap that allows the bridge to expand. Ice that held the concrete debris in place melted, and the concrete fell onto the roadway. He described it as a freeze/thaw cycle, according to WBUR.
“That’s how these types of failures occur,” Gulliver said.
Crews completed an initial inspection of the Prudential Tunnel, removing more loose concrete on the ground Friday afternoon, Gulliver said. More inspections will happen Friday night and over the next few days.
“It’s a very, very rare occurrence that you have a failure in joints or anything overhead,” Gulliver said. “This was under active inspection right now to try to avoid this exact kind of thing that happened. They have not progressed to that point, but again, I want to really assure the public that this is not something that’s a frequent occurrence.”
