BATON ROUGE - A DOTD crew shut down westbound traffic on I-10 near Siegen Lane for emergency roadwork late Wednesday morning. 

Three lanes were blocked between Siegen and Bluebonnet Boulevard around 9:45 a.m. while DOTD filled potholes on the road. Morning traffic was backed up past Highland while the work took place.

A DOTD spokesperson said originally, crews were only assigned to fix one pot hole, but once they got to the job site, they noticed a series of pot holes and decided to keep working.

"When they went outside and started filling the potholes they saw that there were some more that they could take care of while they were there," Rodney Mallett with DOTD said.

The agency says they attempted to mitigate congestion on the roadway by using the "rolling closure" method, where Motor Assistance Patrol trucks keep moving as the work is performed.

"Traffic did not come to a complete stop, it was a rolling closure and also the cars were passing possibly on the shoulder. So that minimized the amount of congestion we had although there still was congestion but at that point, we had to fill the potholes," Mallett said.

Another rolling closure for emergency work took place around 2 p.m. on I-12 West between Walker and O'Neal Lane. Again, three lanes were blocked while DEMCO repaired powerlines along the roadway. 

DOTD first alerted WBRZ about the rolling closure on I-12 around 2 p.m., but then said it was canceled. Still, the rolling closures began at that time, and Mallett said, "The cancellation was canceled."

The rolling closure lasted around 30 minutes before being cleared completely from the road. Delays have returned to normal in the capital area.