Many calls we hear on the police, fire, and EMS scanner radios in the WSB 24-Hour Traffic Center end up being less fierce than what a stressed caller has just relayed to a 911 dispatcher. The “apartment fire” ends up being burnt food on a stove. The “entrapment” in a vehicle is often a dented door that won’t open.

Last Monday’s “big rig crash, car overturned, entrapment, large fire” call on I-285/westbound (Outer Loop) at Ashford Dunwoody Road (Exit 29) in DeKalb actually managed to undersell the true gravity of the scene. At one point, the chaos brought flashbacks of 2017.

When Dunwoody PD and DeKalb FD arrived just before 3 p.m., they saw a roaring fire from a mangled tractor trailer under the Ashford Dunwoody Road bridge. They immediately shut down all westbound lanes of I-285 but soon noticed how hot the truck was burning and how the inferno had wrapped around parts of the bridge. Firefighters’ cadences on the DeKalb scanner relayed major urgency.

This situation sounded all too similar to the fire under I-85 that collapsed its span south of GA-400 five years ago.

Responders acted quickly and shut down Ashford Dunwoody Road itself and the opposite, eastbound side of I-285 right at the bridge. They could not risk motorists traveling under a potentially compromised structure.

The ensuing, mounting gridlock on I-285 sent drivers into Downtown Atlanta, packing the Downtown Connector (I-75/85) both ways and also jamming up I-75/southbound and I-85/southbound well before their merge. Any major cut through or side road - Johnson Ferry, Hammond, Abernathy, Roswell Road, any road ending in “Dunwoody”- was absolutely jammed.

For as bad the drive was for people just avoiding the double-closure of I-285, it was worse for those that got caught on the freeway. Dunwoody PD managed to clear traffic that was stuck between on I-285/westbound Chamblee Dunwoody (Exit 30) and the fiery scene, by turning cars around and up the Chamblee Dunwoody on-ramp. Then they forced remaining I-285/westbound traffic onto the new, long Ashford Dunwoody ramp, where it could either exit north on Ashford Dunwoody (which created a miserable line to turn left onto Hammond Drive and backed up the exit ramp) or could advance across and ramp back to I-285/westbound after GA-400.

For as maligned as the new construction along I-285 and GA-400 has been, the fact that the new ramps at Ashford Dunwoody were not attached to the bridge meant that the interchange could stay open, even though the bridge was not.

Any traffic control I-285 drivers received from Dunwoody PD was almost non-existent on the Sandy Springs side. When I flew over the scene in the WSB Skycopter, no one was forcing I-285/eastbound traffic off onto Roswell Road (Exit 25) nor was any attempt made to turn around the vehicles stuck past the point of no return. Sandy Springs FD helped douse the fire, but traffic seemed to be handled as if, “Meh, that’s Dunwoody’s problem.”

So, if you’re following: the people on the side of the road with the actual crash and fire actually moved better than those on the other side. Real life is stranger than fiction.

I-285/eastbound was, however, the first interstate to re-open, doing so just after 6 p.m. Bridge inspectors on cherry pickers had to wait for the bridge to cool (more than two hours after they doused the fire) to check it. They determined that the bridge was sound enough on one side, at least.

Then the responders began actually cleaning up and towing the destroyed semi, along with the blue vehicle that had flipped. Remarkably, only three people in this melee received only minor injuries.

Some speculated that the rest of the interstate and Ashford Dunwoody might not reopen for days, but thankfully various state agencies and their contractors put their heads together and locked arms.

At around 7 p.m., a GSP helicopter landed on I-285/westbound, to my surprise as I reported it. I reached out to GDOT’s Natalie Dale, who confirmed the State Patrol offered to fly one of Georgia’s “materials experts” from Forest Park to the scene to aid in the inspection. Urgency.

Though some utility lines under the bridge needed repairing and subsequent inspections were needed in the following days, the bridge was deemed safe and the left lanes of I-285/westbound opened again just after 1:30 Tuesday morning. By 6 a.m., all lanes of I-285/westbound and all but one turn lane of Ashford Dunwoody were all open.

Because the fire happened in an active work zone and had damaged the pavement below, GDOT contractor NPC had the paving equipment necessary on site to do the job. If the asphalt had been undamaged, the interstate would have opened earlier.

Big, nasty traffic problems are worthless to suffer through if nothing is learned from them. On one hand, the various state players knew the magnitude of the closure and showed its priority with extreme cooperation and by sending three different public safety alerts to citizens’ mobile devices. On the same hand, Dunwoody PD acted quickly to not only douse the fire, but also to find multiple outlets for the stuck-traffic. On the other hand, there could have been more coordination with or within Sandy Springs PD to better help the poor drivers on I-285/eastbound.

And every commuter in Atlanta should know this by now: sometimes, you’re just stuck. When road choice A is shut down, and choices B through K are gridlocked, the best advice is to relax, turn on your favorite radio station (95.5 WSB, of course), and let time slow down for a little while. Sometimes, the outcomes are just plain out of your control.

Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. He also hosts a traffic podcast with Smilin’ Mark McKay on wsbradio.com. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.

©2022 Cox Media Group