And I thought they were all in DC looting the big bucks.

Trump today spoke of and exhibited the federal list of permit and agency(17 agencies ) regulations for a state to build a highway that his advisor compiled
on average it takes 20 freaking years to get all the approvals He said he will get it down to a year. Pres. Trump said former Pres Obama's trillion was diverted to a lot of programs and mired in the regulations.

Thanks Dino

Another reason to keep the mentally unstable off of the streets for our safety and theirs. When we as a society listened to the bleeding hearts and released all of the mental patients onto the streets it has been nothing but trouble. This one is just bigger than most of the problems that they cause.

Who lit the fire is incidental. Government built it by storing tons of flammable PVC under that overpass. Join any government bureaucracy, no thinking required and you never get blamed for what you do.

Just another example of how well socialism works. Fixing the infrastructure was key within the Obama promise machine. Not a single brick was put in place, not a steel structure, steel cables, or expandable road ways came t pass. Nothing was (ha-ha) shovel ready. It was just another forgotten promise that voters cannot remember.

Hell, it's probably a private contractor that charged the government for "mobilization costs" and "staging & storage"... then put it under the freeway.

Private roads is interesting, but unrelated to this issue.

And just the kind of decision a government functionary would take--never thinking about the hazards. We don't even know to which agency those spools of conduit belonged--but I doubt it was the highway department.

My thoughts as well above. Lazy asses.

Huh, just saw the post, see my posting above, I was only speculating... LOL. Guess I was right.

Where's the mystery here? It was probably a homeless encampment and someone had a fire going that got out of hand... sounds like camping in the middle of all the spools of conduit and under a freeway would keep them out of the wind and out of the rain. Fire got out of control and they took off...

Now those "shovel-ready projects" should be storing their materials and equipment at a fenced/locked staging area, not under the freeway overpass. I think it's the state's own fault for bad practices.

Three homeless people were arrested, though it appears only one of them allegedly started the fire.
Allegedly? I don't think I've used that word since I was a newspaper reporter during the 70s.
I was taught at Troy State to use that word to keep from being sued.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/us/atla...

Does anyone want to talk about how soon we can return streets, roads, and highways to private enterprise? And how this disaster need not have happened? For example: who decided to store spools of plastic electrical conduit where, even if they hadn't caught fire, anyone could have boosted one of the spools onto a truck and hauled it away to sell it? And now how long must long-haul truckers go hundreds of miles out of their way to avoid the missing span?

I had seen one report that they had taken someone into custody for starting the blaze. One report said the person was mentally unstable.

Bought two cartons in Missouri yesterday for $84
Vs $169.40 in Minnesota. Double due to theft from the state.

And trying to collect a $200 tax since that is their stated reason to exist.

Thanks Freedomforall,
Alcohol Tobbaco & Firearms agents searching for cigarettes carelessly discarded by wino's who were packing heat?

From local WSB-TV source:
"An ATF-certified fire investigator was at the scene Thursday night and ATF is lending its expertise in determining the cause and origin of the fire as part of the investigation."

Great, the experts on burning people to death, oh, wait, that was the FBI that took over from the ATF and burned everyone in Waco.
Guess they couldn't get the real experts, but hopefully the ATF was paying attention.

That is what I thought also, the fire had to be started by someone likely with a propellant.

And the conduit just magically burst into flames! I saw this on the news this morning and could not help but wonder how a fire of this size started, in a concrete jungle. I don't see how this fire could have started by itself. And I don't see conduit catching fire easily without another more flammable liquid or explosive getting it going. Maybe I just don't know my conduit.