A fire inside the Allegheny Tunnel on Thursday, June 5, sent roughly 150 people scrambling out of the Pennsylvania Turnpike passage, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
The tunnel — one of two bored-mountain passages on the Turnpike’s main line through the Alleghenies — required a large-scale evacuation. That’s not a quick walk out; the Allegheny Tunnel runs more than 6,000 feet through Allegheny Mountain near Somerset County.
What’s next
The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately confirmed, and it’s unclear when the tunnel reopened — or whether it had reopened at all as of the initial report. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission hadn’t issued a formal statement in the time covered by the Post-Gazette’s initial story.
Delays on that stretch of the Turnpike can back up traffic for miles; the parallel eastbound and westbound bores mean a closure of even one tube pushes everything through a single lane in each direction. Whether one bore or both were affected wasn’t specified in early reports.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Google News, June 5, 2026. Read the original report.
