Inspectors found no other areas in need of immediate attention after chunks of concrete fell onto the Massachusetts Turnpike in Boston’s Prudential Tunnel on Friday, MassDOT said Monday.
The debris narrowly missed vehicles and snagged traffic on the busy artery, though no one was hurt.
The incident occurred in the westbound lanes of the Massachusetts Turnpike, state police said, damaging multiple vehicles. Video shows the concrete fall just in front of a pickup truck and a car, which run over the debris.
MassDOT officials said that the concrete fell due to the weather – recent freeze and thaw cycles dislodged the concrete and caused it to fall into the roadway. The agency routinely inspects for these kinds of issues.
Stressing that the Prudential Tunnel is safe, MassDOT said Monday that crews inspected 154 locations at major tunnel locations across the system Friday into Saturday and found no further areas in need of immediate repair. Officials said Friday that inspection locations included areas of the Prudential, O’Neill, Sumner, Callahan and Storrow tunnels.
As part of the inspection process, some concrete was chipped out in some locations, though no loose concrete was found.
Overhead shielding has been installed at the Huntington Avenue expansion joint and will be installed in five other expansion joints as a precaution, MassDOT officials said. The work is being done overnight and should be complete by Tuesday.
A piece of concrete, part of the Prudential Tunnel in Boston, fell into traffic on the Massachusetts Turnpike on Friday. See the moment in this video provided by MassDOT, which shared this explanation for what happened: “Recent freeze/thaw cycles caused the concrete to become saturated, freeze, and then delaminate as temperatures rose today.”
“The tunnel is safe,” Jonathan Gulliver, Massachusetts’ top highway official, said at a news conference Friday on the incident.
MassDOT explained in a statement that “a section of non-structural concrete at an expansion joint below Huntington Avenue became dislodged and fell into a travel lane in the Prudential Tunnel.” They said recent freeze and thaw cycles caused the concrete to become saturated, freeze and then “delaminate” as temperatures rose on Friday.
The piece of concrete that fell was about four inches wide and four to five feet long, Gulliver said. It helps the tunnel expand and contract as the weather changes, but the piece became loose within the joint and was being held up by pressure from ice.
It’s a similar phenomenon to what causes the many potholes that appear around Boston each winter, and while falling concrete is rare, it’s something that MassDOT keeps “a very, very, close eye on.”
Gulliver also noted that bridges and tunnels are regularly inspected for this kind of damage, but crews hadn’t gotten to this portion of the Prudential Tunnel yet.
Footage showing a chunk of concrete falling in the Mass. Turnpike’s Prudential Tunnel on Friday shocked Boston drivers.
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