The 47 Freeway and the Vincent Thomas Bridge remained closed Friday morning, Sept. 27, as Los Angeles city firefighters continued to monitor a lithium-battery fire that erupted after a truck overturned on Thursday.
Fire officials said the batteries could take 24 to 48 hours to burn off and that the freeway and bridge will remain closed as they wait it out, said Nicholas Prange, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
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“We’re in a little bit of a holding pattern, unfortunately,” Prange said. “(Firefighters are) continuing to keep their distance.
“It’s going through periods of open flames and others of just smoke as some of those batteries in there go through different cycles of heating up and thermal runaway,” he said.
Firefighters have not wanted to spray water on the fire for fear of spreading hazardous materials into the waterways or other areas, Prange said.
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The crash was reported just before noon on Thursday. There were no reports of injuries, evacuations or widespread hazardous warnings.
The truck did not overturn on the Vincent Thomas Bridge itself, but on a portion of the 47 Freeway at Navy Way east of the bridge on Terminal Island.
Firefighters arrived and went into defensive mode, creating a large perimeter around the site after one battery exploded, fire officials said. A hazardous-materials team was also dispatched to the scene.
The closures caused heavy gridlock in the area and took its toll on Port of Los Angeles operations, with several terminals expected to be closed on Friday, port officials said in a statement.
Port of Los Angeles spokesperson Phillip Sanfield, however, said impacts on the port’s workflow are expected to be minimal.
“There are no plans to reroute ships and we really are expecting minimal delays,” Sanfield said in a phone interview Friday morning. “Once we get the clearance, we will catch up. Thursday nights and Fridays are not a peak for gate movements, so if this had to happen, a Thursday night and Friday are lighter than Monday through Thursday.”
Weekends also are typically lighter, he added.
Port officials are meeting the various agencies that will make the determination on when workers can return, but tentative estimates have been 48 hours.
“We lost a couple shifts here but you can make up those shifts,” Sanfield said. “We have the best labor workforce in the world and they’ll be critical in that plan to catch up. We’re optimistic about getting back to work soon.”
“We have drones that are monitoring the heat,” LAFD spokesman David Ortiz told Fox 11 on Friday. “It’s hard to tell because these are sealed batteries and we don’t know if these chain-reaction thermal runaways will continue to reignite — or by us moving it, make a bigger problem and create another fire.”
City News Service and staff writer Donna Littlejohn contributed to this report.