Los Angeles' fire-damaged interstate will not be torn down

Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Interstate 10 in downtown Los Angeles, which was damaged in a large arson fire over the weekend, will not have to be torn down and could open to traffic in a few weeks.

"This is not a demo operation. This is a repair operation," California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday. "We expect the I-10 freeway to be reopened to traffic in 3 to 5 weeks. The state is working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to get this done."

"We're going to do everything in our power to move that into the more immediate future and not extend this to that five-week period," the governor told reporters Tuesday near the mile-long site of the interstate closure between Alameda Street and the East Los Angeles Interchange.

The major L.A. traffic corridor, which carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles everyday, will reopen sooner than expected after engineers analyzed core samples taken from the freeway.

The massive fire, which officials say was started by arson Saturday, damaged approximately 100 columns under the freeway. Detectives with CalFire are still working to determine who started the fire, and the public is being asked to provide information.

"We got good news today," L.A. Mayor Karen Bass told reporters Tuesday night. "At this point, we do not anticipate that the freeway is coming down. It can be repaired. This is going to be an inconvenience of weeks as opposed to months."

Earlier Tuesday, Bass took a helicopter tour over the freeway and the surrounding areas to see how traffic was moving on the second workday since the fire.

"It was very, very obvious that when people did not stay on the freeway and decided to get on the surface streets, the surface streets look like an absolute parking lot," Bass said, as she urged commuters to work from home as much as possible and travel on other freeways, instead of surface streets.

"Stay on the freeways, follow your apps that will redirect you," Bass pleaded. "There are 300,000 commuters everyday through this area. Our streets cannot take that amount."