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Baltimore\u2019s Francis Scott Key Bridge crumpled at the impact of the Dali shipping container a gross tonnage of 95,000<\/a> on Tuesday morning. The bridge, constructed in 1977, didn\u2019t stand a chance, experts say, but the 985-foot long cargo ship<\/a>\u2014moving at 8 knots, about 9 miles per hour\u2014had no time to avoid hitting the bridge\u2019s pillar, either.<\/p>\n The ship collision and subsequent collapse of the 1.6 mile bridge was not the result of any one entity, but rather a confluence of variables that resulted in a tragedy with rippling impacts on Baltimore, including the presumed death of six construction workers<\/a> and repair job that will likely take years and hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a>. Its original construction more than four decades past took five years and cost $316 million.<\/p>\n The Key Bridge tragedy is the latest example of a decades-long catalog of shipping-related incidents: Over the past 10 years, there have been 27,477 reported shipping incidents, with 3,098 involving a collision, according to Allianz<\/a> Global Corporate & Specialty\u2019s 2023 Safety and Shipping Review<\/a>. From 1960 to 2015, there have been 35 major bridge collapses as a result of a barge or ship collision, per a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport<\/a>. About half of those collisions were in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n The scope of the incidents on port and commuter activity highlights the fundamental challenges in both U.S. infrastructure and in cargo shipping safety protocols, experts say. Port infrastructure and the growth of the cargo-shipping sector go hand-in-hand, Captain Rahul Khanna, global head of marine risk consulting at Allianz, told Fortune.<\/em> But fixing the factors that led to the tragedy is easier said than done.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to point fingers,\u201d Khanna said. <\/em>\u201cThese are macroeconomic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Khanna called the Baltimore bridge collapse \u201cone of the worst nightmares for a captain of a ship.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dali ship stays on its appropriate track approaching the Port of Baltimore around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday until it loses power while approaching the bridge, Sal Mercogliano, an associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina, explains in a YouTube video<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe ship goes completely dark,\u201d he says. \u201cJust to be clear: the worst feeling ever on a ship is to lose power.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, the Dali vessel had a \u201cmomentary loss of propulsion<\/a>\u201d and Mercogliano notes in his video that smoke begins to \u201cbelch\u201d out from the ship and its trajectory veers to its right, colliding with the bridge\u2019s pillar.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the first issue for this vessel. The same Dali ship hit a quay in Antwerp, Belgium in 2016, Reuters reported<\/a>, and it sustained \u201chull damage impairing seaworthiness,\u201d per public records available on Equasis. Synergy Marine Group, Dali\u2019s ship management, did not respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Khanna argued that one of the predominant reasons for difficulties in managing cargo shipping accidents is the sheer size of the vessels, which have increased about 1,500% since the ballooning of the industry 50 years ago, according to Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty.<\/p>\n Bigger cargo ships mean that navigating safety incidents is \u201ccomplicated,\u201d Khanna said. Salvage and rescue after an incident take longer with larger ships, and if there\u2019s a fire, it could spread faster because the ship carries more fuel and flammables. While ships have gotten bigger, personnel have stayed the same or gotten smaller, making it harder for staff to put out fires or send emergency responses. The sheer size of a vessel can be an obstacle, as illustrated by the Ever Given<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s largest shipping containers, which became stuck in the Suez Canal for six days in 2021. The Suez Canal Authority demanded $550 million<\/a> for its salvage.<\/p>\n These containers are unlikely to get much bigger, however, because of the physical limitations of port infrastructure, which because of smaller cranes and bridges, cannot accommodate large ships. There\u2019s also funding differences: Companies can fund bigger boats if demand for goods are high, but infrastructure can largely depend on government funding.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easier to build a larger ship,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cBuilding a new port or building a new bridge is a much bigger and complex task.\u201d<\/p>\n The Key Bridge is one of the longest steel continuous truss bridges in the world, a type of bridge that is resource-efficient, but not built for today\u2019s cargo industry.<\/p>\n Craig Stodart, bridge design director at P. Joseph Lehman Consulting Engineers, told Fortune <\/em>that the design of the bridge, with few protections around its piers, or pillars, makes it susceptible to severe damage if collided with.<\/p>\n \u201cThis one in particular is what we call \u2018fracture critical\u2019, meaning if something happens with one piece of it, the whole bridge could collapse, which is what happened here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Steel truss bridges have been disappearing for years because of safety issues, Steve Hutchins, Tennessee Department of Transportation\u2019s Region 2 chief bridge inspector at the time, said in a 2017 News Channel 9 ABC<\/a> interview. Many were designed before the ubiquitous use of concrete, an important stabilizer in modern bridge-building.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the time and the period, they were very cost effective,\u201d Hutchins said. \u201cThe technology of concrete hadn\u2019t really gotten to where it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n The structural integrity of the Key Bridge did not appear compromised\u2014it was in \u201cfair condition<\/a>\u201d according to inspection reports from May 2023\u2014highlighting the inherent weakness of the steel truss bridge design in ports today.\u00a0<\/p>\n But while integrity wasn\u2019t an apparent problem for the Key Bridge, the same can\u2019t be said for many other U.S. bridges, Ilgin Guler, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State University, told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a known problem with bridges in the United States,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd there are many people traveling over structurally deficient bridges every day.\u201d<\/p>\n Over 7% of U.S. bridges are considered structurally deficient, with over 178 million trips taken across compromised bridges every day, according to Infrastructure Report Card\u2019s 2021 report<\/a>. Almost half of the country\u2019s 617,000 bridges are more than 50 years old. President Joe Biden\u2019s administration has worked to address the U.S.\u2019s lag in infrastructure<\/a>: Road and bridges are the biggest line item<\/a> in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, with a $110 billion piece of the $1.2 trillion pie.<\/p>\n The consequences of infrastructure disasters on local and national economies are apparent by the fallout of the Baltimore tragedy: Key Bridge was a fundamental part of the city\u2019s traffic route, with 12 million vehicles<\/a> crossing the bridge annually. The Port of Baltimore is one of the U.S.\u2019s largest ports for cars and trucks given its proximity to the midwest. It handled 850,000 vehicles<\/a>, as well as 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo worth $80 billion in 2024, Maryland Governor Wes Moore reported<\/a>. The national and Maryland Departments of Transportation did not respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Incidents like this can be a moment of reckoning and propel a reprioritization, Guler said: \u201cHopefully [it] will bring to the spotlight the importance of the infrastructure and making sure everything can be done to maintain and keep these structures in good condition.\u201d<\/p>\n But port industry stakeholders will have to take these incidents seriously, Khanna said, as the onus on fixing collision-causing snags don\u2019t just fall on the shipping industry. A few years ago, Khanna would say that the growing size of cargo containers would compromise the safety of cargo shipping. But today, he said, industry professionals are working to make changes. For example, global shipping companies are researching how fire spreads on containers<\/a> in an effort to improve response times.<\/p>\n Lost vessel incidents, where a ship is presumed missing or wrecked, have dropped by 36% over the last year, and safety incidents including collisions have plateaued to about 3,000 annually, according to Allianz\u2019s safety report. The seriousness with which the industry is addressing concerns should put extra pressure on the port industry to do the same, Khanna argued.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stakeholders outside the industry\u2014for example the ports and the terminals\u2014they also need to step in and participate equally and pick up their share of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nShips are getting bigger\u2014and harder to control<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Foundational cracks in American infrastructure<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A moment of reckoning<\/strong><\/h2>\n