Basil Eleby faces first-degree arson and criminal damage to property charges in a fire that caused a heavily traveled overpass to disintegrate

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The man suspected of starting a raging fire that collapsed a portion of Interstate 85 a few miles north of downtown Atlanta was charged on Saturday with arson.

Atlanta: three arrested as major interstate bridge collapses after huge fire Read more

The Fulton County sheriff’s office said bond was set at $200,000 for Basil Eleby, during a court hearing. He faces charges of first-degree arson and first-degree criminal damage to property. The arson charge is new. Eleby’s next court appearance was set for 14 April.

Deputy insurance commissioner Jay Florence said Eleby was arrested on Friday along with Sophia Bruner and Barry Thomas. Bruner and Thomas were charged with criminal trespass.

“We believe they were together when the fire was set and Eleby is the one who set the fire,” Florence said.

Florence would not discuss how the fire was started or why, saying details would be released as the investigation progressed.

The fire broke out on Thursday afternoon in an area used to store state-owned construction materials and equipment, sending flames and smoke high into the air and crippling a major traffic artery in a city known for dreadful rush-hour congestion.

Dozens of firefighters battling the roaring blaze moved out of harm’s way amid signs the roadway was breaking apart from the intense heat.

“They heard the cracking of the concrete,” Atlanta fire chief Joel Baker said. “They could see concrete was flying all over the place toward firefighters.”

Experts in structural engineering said fires on highways and bridges rarely burn long enough or hot enough to cause a complete collapse – but it has happened before. Intense heat can compromise even steel-reinforced concrete, said Lauren Stewart, director of the structural engineering and materials laboratory at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

“With fires, especially fires that burn for long periods and with high heat, you can see structures, anything from buildings to bridges, can have their material properties degrade,” Stewart said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Repairs will take ‘at least several months’. Photograph: WXIA-TV/ddpUSA/Barcroft Images

In 1996, a fire in a big pile of tires beneath I-95 in Philadelphia left a span too weak to handle cars, forcing authorities to shut down four miles of the busy east coast route for repairs.

Andy Herrmann, a retired partner with the New York-based engineering firm Hardesty & Hanover, said there have also been a few instances of gasoline trucks crashing and causing intense heat that damaged overpasses.

Herrmann said concrete will undergo severe cracking at about 1,500F (815.5C) and start disintegrating at higher temperatures. Building roads to withstand such heat would be prohibitively expensive, he said.

“We have limited dollars for maintaining our bridges,” Herrmann said. “This is such a rare thing to occur.”

The highway collapse in Atlanta forced commuters to find different routes to work or to use mass transit. Things will not be back to normal for months, said Russell McMurry, commissioner of the Georgia department of transportation.

McMurry told a news conference that 350ft of highway will need to be replaced in both directions on I-85, which carries about 400,000 cars a day through Atlanta and is one of the south’s most important north-south routes. He said repairs will take “at least several months”.

McMurry said his department stored coils of plastic conduit, used in fiber optic networks, beneath the span but insisted they were noncombustible.

US transportation secretary Elaine Chao released $10m for the initial repair work, and the Federal Highway Administration promised more in emergency repair funds. Officials gave no estimate of how much the job would cost.

Built in 1953 and renovated in 1985, the collapsed span scored a sufficiency rating of 94.6 out of 100 in its last inspection in 2015, said Natalie Dale, a spokeswoman for the Georgia DoT.