Questions swirl over Baltimore bridge collapse

As a spring tide rushed out of Baltimore harbour just after midnight on March 26, the hulking outlines of a cargo ship nearly three football fields long and stacked high with thousands of containers sliced through frigid waters towards the Francis Scott Key Bridge.The vessel, the Dali, was 30 minutes into its 27-day journey from Baltimore to Colombo.Then the lights on the Dali went dark. The crew urgently reported to local authorities that the vessel had lost power and propulsion. The ship bore down on the bridge.In a scene captured from a livestreaming camera, the ship smashed into a pillar of the bridge with so much force that the massive southern and central spans of the bridge collapsed within seconds.Watch: US bridge collapse caught on cam medium nocaption108788181A highway repair crew was on the structure, working the night shift, filling potholes. At least eight members of the construction crew plunged into the 50-feet-deep Patapsco river below.Six people were presumed dead as officials suspended the search-and-rescue effort on the night of March 26.“Based on the length of time we have gone in this search, the extensive search efforts that we have put into it, the water temperature, that at this point we do not believe we are going to find any of these individuals still alive,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said.Two construction workers were rescued from the water; one went to the hospital and was later released.Biden praises prompt action of Indian crewUS President Joe Biden hailed the prompt action of the 22-member Indian crew of the cargo ship that struck and demolished a key bridge for saving lives by alerting local authorities before the dramatic collision.In remarks at the White House, Biden praised the ship’s crew, saying the alert they sent before the collision saved lives.“Personnel on board the ship were able to alert the Maryland Department of Transportation that they had lost control of their vessel…As a result, local authorities were able to close the bridge to traffic before the bridge was struck, which undoubtedly saved lives,” Biden said.He stressed that “everything so far indicates” that this was a terrible accident. “At this time, we have no other indication — no other reason to believe there was any intentional act here,” Biden said.Ship management company Synergy Marine Group confirmed in a statement that the crew on Dali is “All Indian, 22 in total”. medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/Sr6_kg14wUk?si=L_abjhreztiFtjjkThe shocking collapse of the 2.5km bridge, seared into the memories of the countless people who viewed video of the ship bearing down on the bridge, was described by officials as an accident.“We haven’t seen any credible evidence of a terrorist attack,” said Maryland governor Wes Moore, who praised the work of quick-acting officials who rushed to stop traffic from entering the doomed bridge, mitigating what could have been a far deadlier disaster.US President Joe Biden announced that the Port of Baltimore would be closed indefinitely. Although ranked only the 17th biggest port in the nation overall in 2021, it specialises in vehicles — the port ranks first in the US for the volume of automobiles and light trucks — and experts said its closure could affect deliveries, including of farm and construction machinery.Around the world, about 40 ships, including 34 cargo vessels, had Baltimore listed as a destination on March 26, including 10 commercial ships with anchors dropped in nearby waters, according to MarineTraffic, a maritime data platform that tracks ships.Key infrastructureThe Key Bridge, which experts said would take years to replace, was a major north-south artery, and its collapse wiped out a roadway that tens of thousands of people used to travel to and from Baltimore every day. The bridge carried more than 12.4mn commercial and passenger vehicles in 2023, according to a Maryland state government report issued in November.Biden called the bridge “one of the most important elements” supporting the US economy in the Northeast and said he expected the federal government to pay for the “entire cost” of bridge repairs.Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the agency would lead the investigation into the cause of the bridge collapse. medium108816982A construction company employee who laboured alongside the six men who were presumed dead said many of his co-workers were migrants working to support their relatives.“We are low-income families,” said the worker, Jesus Campos. “Our relatives are waiting for our help back in our home countries.”Divers were expected to return to the water on March 27 to try to recover the bodies.The collapse of the bridge, which opened in 1977 and is named after Francis Scott Key, the Maryland-born author of the American national anthem, raised questions about what caused the ship to lose power at a critical moment; about the procedures of guiding massive vessels out of the harbour; and whether the design of the bridge made it more susceptible to collapse. medium108817032A harbour pilot and an apprentice were on the ship as it navigated out of the Port of Baltimore, said Clay Diamond, the executive director of the American Pilots Association. He said he was told by the Maryland pilots’ group that the vessel had a “complete blackout” a few minutes before the crash and never regained propulsion power.Diamond said the pilot in command of the ship, who had more than 10 years’ experience, ordered that the vessel be turned as much as possible to the left and that the port anchor be dropped in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to halt the vessel’s drift towards the bridge.Experts debated the nautical details of the ship’s departure. The Dali was exiting the harbour as a spring tide was rushing out. The moon was still almost completely full, having reached its fullest less than 24 hours earlier.Full moons in springtime are associated with some of the largest tidal changes in local sea level. And while Baltimore’s harbour experiences fairly small changes even during springtime full moon tides, the tidal movements of water could have been a factor in the bridge impact. medium108816357“The ebbing tide increases the speed of the water seaward, which effectively has a cumulative effect on the speed of an outbound vessel, and any currents in the water could also have complicated navigation,” said Basil Karatzas, the CEO of Karatzas Marine Advisors, a ship inspection company in New York.The Dali, which was operating under the Singaporean flag, had two pilots onboard — local specialists who guide vessels in and out of harbours — according to a statement by its owners, Grace Ocean Investment. There were no injuries reported to the harbour pilots or the other 22 crew members on board, the Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement.Before heading off on its voyage, the Dali had returned to the US from Panama on March 19, harbouring in New York. It then arrived on March 23 in Baltimore, where it spent two days in the port.Maersk, the shipping giant, said in a statement on March 26 that it had chartered the vessel, which was carrying Maersk cargo.Chequered historyThe Dali was built in 2015 by South Korea-based Hyundai Heavy Industries. The next year, the ship was involved in a minor incident when it hit a stone wall at the Port of Antwerp in Belgium. The Dali sustained damage at the time, but no one was injured.An inspection of the Dali last year at a port in Chile reported that the vessel had a deficiency related to “propulsion and auxiliary machinery”. The inspection, conducted on June 27 at the port of San Antonio, specified that the deficiency concerned gauges and thermometers. It is unclear whether the problems were fixed or if they played any role in the accident.The Dali has had 27 inspections since 2015, according to a database maintained by Equasis. medium108816395While the collapse of the Francis Scott Key was one of the most dramatic bridge crashes in US history, it was not the most deadly. In 1993, a towboat struck a rail bridge in Alabama on a foggy September morning and threw the train tracks out of alignment on the Big Bayou Canot Bridge. Minutes later, an Amtrak passenger train derailed as it crossed the water, killing 47 people.In May 1980, the Sunshine Skyway near St Petersburg, Florida, was struck by a phosphate freighter in a storm, causing a 1,200ft steel section to collapse and sending a Greyhound bus, at least five cars and a pickup truck plunging 154ft into the water. Thirty-five people died.Engineers who viewed the footage of the bridge collapsing on March 26 wondered whether the total collapse might have been avoided if the pylons had been equipped with blocking devices known as fenders.And they said they were not surprised that the structure came down so quickly. medium108815319Sanjay Arwade, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that if the vessel had taken out one of the bridge’s support piers, as it appeared to have done, a collapse would be almost inevitable.“For any long-span bridge,” he said, “the complete loss of one of the piers is going to be catastrophic.”Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, speaking at a news conference near the site, called the bridge “one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure”.He described the collapse as a “unique circumstance”.“I do not know of a bridge that has been constructed to withstand a direct impact from a vessel of this size,” he said.