SEPTA bus gets stuck in fresh concrete minutes after South Philly potholes are repaired
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A SEPTA bus became stuck in freshly poured concrete Thursday night outside a South Philadelphia bakery, just minutes after crews finally filled potholes that the business says had plagued the block for more than a year.
The incident happened around 7 p.m. on the 1500 block of S. 8th Street, outside Termini Brothers Bakery.
Video from cameras at the bakery shows the Route 47 bus pulling onto the block and driving into the wet concrete. The bus remained stuck for several hours before it was towed away shortly before 10 p.m.
Heather Cran, director of operations for Termini Brothers, said the bakery had been trying for about 14 months to get the two large potholes in front of the business repaired.
"Our customer service team has been calling the city daily," Cran said. "Yesterday we were so excited to finally see the potholes being fixed."
That excitement quickly turned to disbelief.
Cran said crews had placed barriers around the freshly poured concrete to allow it to dry. About two minutes after the cement was laid, passengers are seen getting off the bus and moving the barricades.
"Some passengers hopped out and moved the barricades away and the bus drove right into the cement," Cran said.
The bus became stuck, with its wheels spinning, as workers and witnesses watched.
Marlen Palacios, a sales manager at Termini Brothers, was closing the bakery when she saw what happened.
"We just see everybody got off the bus and we were like, OK, here we go again," Palacios said.
SEPTA said an investigation is underway. Andrew Busch, chief officer of media relations for SEPTA, said the bus should not have been there.
"What we found is that there was a detour in effect for that block, so the bus shouldn't have been on that block," Busch said.
SEPTA said it is reviewing video from the bus and other information to determine exactly what happened and what can be learned from the incident.
"What's important for us is whenever we do have an incident that we can learn from it, you know, that's everybody from our management on down to our drivers, so we'll do that through this process," Busch said. "We're gonna look at this, make sure we understand everything that happened and what we can do better moving forward."
No one on the bus was injured.
By Friday morning, Streets Department crews were back on the block repairing the damage and patching the potholes again.
Termini Brothers decided to thank the workers with a Philadelphia staple: cannoli.
"They're working so hard and the poor guys just had to come back and do the whole thing all over again, so they deserve some cannoli too," Cran said.
And Cran said the bus driver is welcome to stop by as well.
"Tell him to call me," she said.
