It’s amazing what we are capable of doing when we absolutely have to, when our backs are against the wall, when it comes time to cut through all the bureaucratic gobbledygook and endless red tape.

Sometimes we actually get something done.

Take the emergency repairs on I-95 in Philly for example. Officials closed the interstate Monday night after a 2-inch crack was noticed in a support beam on a bridge near Aramingo Avenue.

A 3-mile span of the interstate was immediately shut down, and commuter chaos ensued.

Initial estimates indicated the span might be closed for as long as five days.

Not hardly.

They obviously underestimated the power of the American worker.

Crews arrived on the scene overnight Monday and into Tuesday morning. They set up shop and basically did not leave until the job was done, replacing the support beam with a series of new ones to shore up the span.

PennDOT’s contractor, J.D. Eckman, of Atglen, Chester County, went to work at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning to replace the 15-foot-high column.

They finished the job in less than 48 hours. Early this morning PennDOT tested the structure by running some fully loaded salt trucks over the span.

They waved the checkered flag at 6:20 a.m.

In a series of openings, all the on-ramps were slowly reopened.

Well done by all. But there remains a haunting question in all this. How many other crumbling spans are out there, with cracks that get a little bigger with every big rig that rolls over them?

Workers performed a minor miracle in getting I-95 reopened. It will take a much greater miracle to address the crumbling structures that dot our landscape.