In 2007, a gasoline truck crashed on the MacArthur Maze, a high-trafficked tangle of multiple freeways in Oakland. The explosion from the crash melted the overpass. In this compelling story for Popular Mechanics, Mitch Moxley recounts how Clinton “C.C.” Myers, a construction boss known for high-speed emergency bridge repair, took on the challenging job and rebuilt this section of the freeway in only 26 days.
As dawn broke, officials across California were asking, “How the hell are we going to fix this?” The guy they looked to: Will Kempton, the director of Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation. A trim man with graying hair and a matching mustache, Kempton presided over a massive agency notorious for slow, expensive roadworks that snarled traffic around the state.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was Kempton’s big boss. As a young man, Schwarzenegger had worked as a bricklayer between bodybuilding competitions. Now, he saw infrastructure as a way to publicize the government’s capacity to do good. What’s more, Schwarzenegger remembered that the last Republican governor of California, Pete Wilson, had gotten the Santa Monica Freeway, one of the busiest freeways in the world at the time, rebuilt in just 66 days after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Schwarzenegger was a ferocious competitor—in bodybuilding, at the box office, even with his in-laws, the Kennedys (“I’m the only Kennedy in elected office,” he liked to brag). He told his staff to call Governor Wilson. “Find out how he did it,” he said. “Then figure out how to do it faster.”
The solution to Schwarzenegger’s request was C.C. Myers. Back in 1994 Caltrans had estimated it would take 12 to 18 months to repair the Santa Monica Freeway, but Governor Wilson, facing a tough reelection, told the agency to get it done in 140 days. Caltrans opened the job to bids, and Myers won.
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