I found another thread, same issue with someone who went from 2.5.1 to 2.5.2. They did this so I gave it a shot. So far so good and the ping and traceroute web pages work again....
pkg unlock icu
pkg delete -f icu
pkg install -yf icu
I remember now I had pkg icu locked becuase it had issues with running Ubiquiti Unifi on pfSense. I can still hit the unifi page on port 8443 so it seems that upgrading from icu: 69.1,1 to icu: 70.1_1,1 is still allowing unifi to work alongside pfSense.