ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

2023 Interstate 95 highway collapse

Okay, let's pretend you're driving on a big road called Interstate 95. Now, sometimes roads can get old and weak from lots of cars driving on them, and that's exactly what happened in 2023. Remember how we talked about how there are layers of roads? Well, underneath the top layer, there are some parts that help support the road and keep it strong.

Now imagine that one day, those supporting parts of the road beneath the top layer just gave way and broke. This can happen because they have become old and worn out. When that happened, the road couldn't hold itself up anymore, and it collapsed. It's like when you build a tower with blocks and it falls down because it's not strong enough.

When the road collapsed, it means that part of the road fell down and cars couldn't drive on it anymore. It's like if a part of your coloring book ripped and you couldn't color on that page anymore because it was torn.

Now, since Interstate 95 is a very big and important road that connects many cities and states, it caused a lot of problems when it collapsed. People couldn't drive on that section of the road anymore, so they had to find a different way to get where they were going. It's like if the playground you usually go to was closed and you had to go to a different one.

The collapse made a big mess too, because pieces of the road fell all over the place. Just like when you drop your Legos and they scatter everywhere. It took a long time for people to clean up the mess and fix the road, even longer than it would take you to clean up your Legos!

So, in summary, the 2023 Interstate 95 highway collapse happened because the road got too old and couldn't hold itself up anymore. It caused a big problem for people who needed to use that road and made a big mess that took a while to clean up.