If it happened on Sacramento's streets this week, they probably saw it in a room on the second floor at City Hall. There, 45 traffic cameras -- 12 more than usual -- fed constant images of the congestion caused by the Interstate 5 repair project from all around town.

For the past seven days, someone was always watching.

"It's been a long week, definitely," said city Telecommunications Engineer Ryan Billeci.

The duty has fallen largely on him. From his chair, Billeci can access any traffic camera as he needs.

"We're constantly flipping back and forth in cameras," he said.

He looks for trouble spots on surface streets caused by detours from the closure. When things get heavy, Billeci can change traffic light patterns in that area. But even that has only helped so much.

"It was heavier that it normally is (this week)," he said. "In some places, considerably heavier."

Police and fire officials have been camped out in the camera room, too. If any major emergencies happen, they can direct responders through traffic using the cameras.

But so far, so good. "We really haven't had too many issues as far as our response is concerned," said Robin Davis of the Sacramento Fire Department.

There were problems early in the week as semi-trucks crowded surface streets, when they could have detoured on to other freeways. But Billeci said the cameras helped fix that problem -- and most others. It hasn't always been beautiful, but Billeci said it's been far from disastrous, either.

"On a 1 to 10 scale, it's probably a 7 to 8 range," said Billeci. "We were ready for the worst and tried to mitigate it as best we can."

Northbound I-5 is on schedule to re-open before the Monday morning rush-hour. Workers will take a week off before closing off the southbound lanes for repairs starting Friday, June 13.

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