Fire under Lake Shore Drive bridge burns for hours, disrupting traffic
CHICAGO - Firefighters worked for hours Monday to extinguish a burning wooden piling at a construction site under a Lake Shore Drive bridge downtown.
A construction worker’s blowtorch had set fire to a piling about 10:45 a.m. near the base of the bridge in the Chicago River, according to Chicago Fire Dept. spokesman Larry Merritt.
A fire department boat responded and doused the flames within a half hour, but the fire reignited and proved difficult to extinguish, Merritt said. Fire crews monitored and continued to extinguish the flames well into the afternoon.
Fire crews worked a blaze at the base of Lake Shore Drive Oct. 7, 2019, on the Chicago River. | Chicago Fire Dept.
Merritt said the issue was that the wooden piling was encased in metal, which prevented fire fighters from accessing the source of the fire.
The fire was extinguished by 3 p.m. and the scene was turned over to the contractor, Merritt said.
Chicago police said they were called to the the scene for traffic control on Lake Shore Drive, which was briefly shut down. The road was opened again to vehicle traffic, but the pedestrian and bike paths between Monroe and Illinois remained shut down for several hours, police said.
In a tweet, the fire department explained the fire was limited to a “dolphin,” a piling that protects the bridge. Contractors were doing repair work on the bridge when the piling was ignited, the department said.
No contractors of fire fighters were injured in the fire, and there was no damage to the bridge, the department said.