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Engineers look at California collapse

OAKLAND, May 2 (UPI) -- Traffic engineers said the explosive crash that collapsed a highway in Oakland, Calif., may have been an accident waiting to happen.

"This is a wake-up call for the engineering community in California," Abolhassan Astaneh, a University of California, Berkeley, civil engineering professor told the Los Angeles Times of Sunday's crash and explosion of a gasoline tanker that collapsed a freeway and left a busy highway closed.

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"To have a container of 8,600 gallons of fuel burning -- it is like steel skewers on a barbecue, and they get soft," Astaneh told the Times. "You put bare steel with no fireproofing, then you have a major problem, not a freak accident. This was an accident, but one we should have predicted as engineers."

With a major interchange closed and backups significant, state officials boosted transit services and made them free, the Times reported.

The state had spent $8.8 million on demolition, traffic control and free public transportation as of Monday but expected federal help, Caltrans Director Will Kempton said.

In Oakland, meanwhile, the City Council Tuesday declared a state of emergency that will help it seek state or federal aid, the Oakland Tribune reported.

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Mayor Ron Dellums said he was concerned about the effect of traffic on the health of residents, the Tribune reported.

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