Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore...

The warnings came, sometimes in eerily specific terms, years before a giant cargo ship struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge: A ship could lose power “in close vicinity to a bridge,” an out-of-control vessel could cause “a bridge collapse,” and the Key Bridge was “not designed to withstand collisions from large vessels.”


After the strike caused the bridge’s collapse in March, horrified officials described the catastrophe as one that couldn’t have been anticipated.

But a maritime safety committee, including experts from key government agencies, repeatedly raised the possibility of such a disaster over the past two decades, according to previously unreported records obtained by The Washington Post.

For nearly 10 of those years, as ever-larger cargo ships visited Baltimore’s port, the committee included “Recommendations for bridge protection from ship strikes” on a list of its action items. In 2016, that action item stopped appearing in meeting minutes without explanation.


The group, known as the Baltimore Harbor Safety and Coordination Committee, discussed the Key and Chesapeake Bay bridges, among others.

Maryland pilots — specialists who board large vessels and then guide them safely in and out of port — in particular sounded alarm about local bridges needing more protection from errant ships, the records show……….

More than two dozen committee members did not respond to or declined requests for comment, some saying they could not speak because of ongoing investigations into the Dali disaster. Spokesmen for several entities represented on the committee, including the Association of Maryland Pilots and the U.S. Coast Guard, also did not comment.

Experts disagree about whether any protection could have saved the Key Bridge from the Dali given the ship’s size and speed. But they generally agree that bridge-protection standards have not kept pace with the risk posed by the huge container ships that now regularly call on Baltimore and other East Coast ports.

Upgrades are expensive: A ship-collision protection system for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which spans the river separating Delaware from New Jersey, is projected to cost more than $90 million.

But the Baltimore disaster shows that a bridge collapse can be extraordinarily expensive, as well as deadly: Rebuilding the Key Bridge will cost nearly $2 billion, according to Maryland officials…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/23/key-bridge-warnings-ship-strikes/