The I-75 interchange at Union Centre Boulevard reopened Wednesday morning following emergency overnight repairs. The bridge over the highway was closed Tuesday when a tanker truck wrecked, spilling diesel across the pavement and catching fire.
The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) says more repairs are still to come, but a timeline is being worked out. The left-turn lanes from southbound I-75 to Union Centre remain closed until they can be re-striped. Details about the remaining work are expected Wednesday afternoon.
"Our contractors that we had come in last night, they were able to get down what we call an intermediate course of asphalt, but we still have a final surface course that has to be applied, as well as some final pavement markings or striping," ODOT Public Information Officer Kathleen Fuller tells WVXU.
The agency doesn't yet know how much the total cost on the project will be.
That work is weather-dependent, but as of Wednesday morning, Fuller was hopeful it might take place overnight Thursday into Friday.
Is the overpass safe?
The fire sent plumes of dark black smoke into the air. It came nearly a year to the day when a fire beneath the Daniel Carter Beard/Big Mac Bridge in Cincinnati on Nov. 1, 2024, burned hot enough to warp the steel beams and shut the bridge for about three months.
Fuller says this incident was nowhere near as bad.
"Luckily, the bridge is totally fine. The bridge did not incur any structural damage, so the Union Center Boulevard bridge over I-75 was fine. That's why we didn't have any closures on I-75 — everything there was fine. But there are some culverts that had to be inspected."
The Butler County Engineer's Office says those culverts will need to be either repaired or replaced as part of the work planned for later this week.
Late Tuesday, the West Chester Police Department indicated the overpass would be closed for the "foreseeable future." However, most of the interchange was reopened by around 5:15 Wednesday morning.
Fuller explains ODOT was able to quickly mobilize a repair team.
"We have a contract — it's kind of a standing contract — that we can use when we have an emergency situation like this," she tells WVXU. "Jurgensen Company was available to come in late last night; they were able to send a crew in to do this."
This article will be updated following a Wednesday afternoon press conference.
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