Eighty-five hundred gallons of gasoline is a cargo that needs to be handled carefully. If you doubt that, consider what happened on June 11, at 6:15 a.m., when the driver of a tanker truck filled with gasoline lost control of his vehicle after taking an exit ramp below Interstate 95 in Philadelphia and struck a wall. The truck tipped and exploded, setting off a fire that melted the support structure of the road above, causing it to collapse.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro issued a proclamation of disaster emergency the next day and acknowledged at a press briefing that that section of I-95, which carries an average of 160,000 vehicles per day, would be closed for “some number of months.” The ripple effects along I-95, a 1,927-mile roadway that runs from Florida to …