Section of Scranton Bridge collapses onto carriageway below.
Demolition of the old Scranton Bridge was scheduled to take one to two days; in the end, it took just a matter of seconds as a section collapsed almost immediately as demolition began.
PennDOT shut down the Central Scranton Expressway several hours before the bridge demolition began.
“What was expected to take one or two days ended up taking one or two seconds this morning, around 5 o’clock in the morning,” said PennDOT official James May. “They were hammering up top and the entire first span over top of the Central Scranton Expressway did collapse down onto itself. The reason that we closed the expressway and the reason that we took the safety precautions that we did was because we knew this would be a possibility. It was not the plan but we knew it was a possibility.”
