In the early hours of March 26, 2024, in a matter of seconds, a structure that had taken four years to build and initially cost US$141 million, vanished.
The disappearance occurred because of a collision between the container ship Motor Vessel (M/V) Dali and the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Interstate 695, southeast of Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The M/V Dali had only travelled approximately four miles from its loading and unloading location in the Port of Baltimore, moving at a speed of about eight knots (9.2 miles per hour), when it struck an unprotected main support column of the Francis Scott Key bridge over the Patapsco River, southeast of Baltimore City Centre.
This collision caused a complete collapse of the bridge and highway structure, resulting in six confirmed deaths and injuries to highway maintenance personnel who were working on the bridge at the time.
However, a pre-collision Mayday warning from the ship’s marine radio and the prompt response by law enforcement personnel stationed at the bridge helped stop traffic in both directions, preventing further casualties.
The estimated cost of replacement is at least US$400 million.
The bridge collapse caused at least six people, all highway maintenance workers, who were filling potholes on the bridge roadway, to fall into the water.
One of the workers rescued shortly after the collapse was seriously injured; the second was pronounced deceased at the hospital.
An additional four members of the maintenance crew were presumed to have died because of the frigid water temperature and the length of time elapsed since the collapse.
Efforts to locate and recover the four missing highway workers continued for more than a week after the incident.
The collapsed bridge debris above and below the waterline at the site complicated recovery efforts to locate these missing workers.
In the immediate post-collision phase of the collapse investigation, there are still many more questions than there are answers.
Investigators are still determining the cause of the disaster that closed the busy Port of Baltimore, and raised concerns about the vulnerability of US sea bridges to increasingly large ships passing under them, as well as the potential harm to the motoring public using these bridges.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge spanned the Southeast Quadrant of Interstate 695, encircling the city.
With a daily traffic flow exceeding 30,000 vehicles, the bridge was a vital artery.
Interstate 695, known as the McKeldin Beltway officially, but commonly referred to as the ‘Baltimore Beltway’ or simply ‘695’ by locals, is a 51.46 mile (82.82 km) auxiliary Interstate Highway encircling the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
This beltway intersects several major roads emanating from the Baltimore area, including Interstate 97, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (B-W Parkway), Maryland Route 295, Interstate 70, Interstate 795, and Interstate 83.
Maintenance of the bridge over the Patapsco River and its approaches falls under the purview of the Maryland Transportation Authority, while the Maryland State Highway Administration is responsible for the remainder of the Baltimore Beltway.
The construction of the Baltimore Beltway was initially planned by Baltimore County in 1949.
In 1956, the State of Maryland assumed responsibility for the project, with the goal of establishing an Interstate bypass for the City of Baltimore.
Francis Scott Key, the author of the US National Anthem, the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ received a dedication for the Outer Harbour Bridge, which spans the Patapsco River.
Completed in 1977, the Key Bridge and its approaches finalised the circular route around Baltimore.
Following the collision, engineers have debated whether measures could have been taken to protect the bridge.
However, it’s evident that design standards have evolved to safeguard bridges from shipping collisions over the nearly 50 years since the Key Bridge was built.
Consequently, its replacement will likely feature enhanced protection measures, but also incur a significantly higher cost than the original bridge.
Shortly after midnight on March 25–26, 2024, container ship M/V Dali departed the Port of Baltimore, bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a crew of 22 and two pilots on board.
Shortly after leaving the port, the ship lost power and steering but was able to broadcast a Mayday call via the ship’s radio.
Shortly thereafter, the loaded container ship struck an unprotected support pillar, causing a major part of the bridge to collapse, with one span falling onto the ship’s forecastle.
None of the 24 individuals on the ship were seriously injured by the collapse.
The Mayday call from the ship was received and acted upon in time to get all moving traffic off the bridge before the collapse occurred and stop all approaching traffic from being on the bridge in both directions of travel.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the incident and will issue a full report in due course.
The NTSB investigators recovered the ship’s data recorder and interviewed the crew as part of their initial investigation into the incident.
The NTSB investigation into the power loss aboard the Dali, a Singapore-flagged vessel, will be a high priority.
Early investigation efforts indicated that the ship had experienced electrical problems prior to departure from the port of Baltimore and should not have been considered seaworthy.
The NTSB investigation has also already determined that of the nearly 4,700 containers on the ship, 56 contained a total of 764 tonnes of hazardous materials, consisting of corrosives, flammables, and lithium-ion batteries.
The ‘Neopanamax’ class container ship M/V Dali measures 299.92 metres in length and has a beam width of 48.2 metres.
It boasts gross and net tonnages of 91,128 and 52,150, respectively, with a deadweight tonnage of 116,851 tonnes.
The ship’s total capacity stands at 9,971 TEU (20- foot equivalent unit) cargo containers.
On May 14, 2013, Hyundai Heavy Industries secured a contract to construct two container ships.
These vessels, the M/V Dali and her sister ship, the M/V Cezanne, were based on a modified ‘Hyundai 9000 wide beam’ design.
The modification involved relocating the wheelhouse from a three-quarters-aft position to a more forward position, boosting the container capacity from 9,034 to a total of 9,962 containers.
Construction of both ships commenced in Ulsan, South Korea, in July 2014, with their launch occurring on December 27, 2014.
Named after painters Salvador Dalí and Paul Cezanne, respectively, the ships were christened on January 5, 2015.
Early in 2015, Maersk 1 delivered both ships to Greek shipowner Oceanbulk Maritime SA for charter.
Stellar Marine, LLC, registered M/V Dali in Majuro, Marshall Islands.
In October 2016, the Dali was sold to Grace Ocean Ltd and it was reflagged in Singapore, where the ship’s owner and manager, Synergy Marine Group, are both located.
Both companies that own and operate the container ship involved in the Key Bridge collision in Baltimore have had similar incidents in the past, and so has the M/V Dali.
A 2016 incident occurred as the M/V Dali was leaving port in Antwerp-Bruges, Belgium.
According to VesselFinder.com, a site that tracks ships worldwide, the ship struck a stone loading pier, causing damage to the ship’s stern.
An investigation into the incident revealed that the ship’s master and pilot made a mistake, leading to the incident and subsequent damage to the ship and port facility.
According to VesselFinder.com, Maersk had chartered M/V Dali at the time of the Antwerp incident, as was also the case in the Baltimore incident.
Three minutes before the M/V Dali collided with the Key Bridge, the ship was able to send a Mayday message on the ship’s radio to the Maryland Department of Transportation.
The radio message indicated that the ship had lost manoeuvrability and that a collision with the bridge was possible.
The receipt of the Mayday message by radio set into motion a critical and successful series of actions by law enforcement personnel stationed at the bridge that were able to clear the bridge of traffic and prevent other vehicles from accessing the bridge itself in both directions of travel.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse disaster was the worst US bridge collapse since 2007, when the Interstate I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River, resulting in the deaths of 13 motorists on the bridge at the time.
From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide owing to ship or barge collisions, according to the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.
In 1980, an eerily similar incident occurred in Tampa, Florida, where a freighter hit a bridge support of the Sunshine State Skyway Bridge.
That bridge collision and collapse resulted in 35 fatalities when six cars, a truck, and a bus, loaded with passengers, fell 150 feet into the waters of Tampa Bay.
After the Sunshine Skyway incident, new protection measures were required around the supports of bridge structures to prevent similar incidents.
The protective structures that engineers were required to put in place were island-like mounds of rocks that shore up the tallest support columns and huge disc-like structures called dolphins, which act as bumpers, blocking wayward ships from striking bridge supports.
Engineers around the country followed suit to help strengthen bridge protections.
The NTSB analysis will surely examine why the bridge protection elements in the Baltimore bridge collapse were either not in place or were inadequate to prevent the Key Bridge incident.
Video footage of the bridge’s catastrophic collapse appeared to show that the structures protecting the bridge’s supports were minimal compared to those of the rebuilt Sunshine Skyway in Florida.
Bridge engineers indicated that many protective features became required after the collapse of Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980.
In that accident, a storm blew a cargo ship off course, causing it to collide with a bridge support.
Thirty-five people died in that incident.
Seven years later, when they rebuilt that bridge, they added dozens of protective dolphins to the new Skyway Bridge.
The safety provisions at the Francis Scott Key Bridge are now an expected critical focus of the NTSB investigation.
When the news media questioned NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy about the safety precautions in place at the Key Bridge, she responded: “We look at changes over time, whether we look at bigger container ships or traffic on a bridge or whether a structure that may be decades old is safe.”
“From what I have seen so far, there was basically no protection around the two main piers of the Key Bridge in the channel,” said Joseph McHugh, a forensic consultant with more than 40 years of highway, bridge and building construction experience.
“With the kind of traffic that bridge gets and the large vessels that frequent that port, I just think someone dropped the ball here.”
One hundred miles up the coast from Baltimore, the Delaware Memorial Bridge along Interstate 95 near Wilmington is in the middle of a three-year, US$95 million safety upgrade.
“The structures themselves that are in the water to act as that protective bumper would absorb the impacts of the ship and keep it away from our tower,” Jim Salmon, a spokesperson for the Delaware River and Bay Authority, was quoted as saying by the news media.
Renderings of the new project at the Delaware Memorial Bridge place protective features closer to the bridge than those at the Key Bridge, encircling the piers from approaching ship traffic.
The Delaware River and Bay Authority predicts that if the same accident happened under their bridge once the system is complete, it would still be standing.
A large mess of steel and concrete from the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge sat in the Patapsco River.
Efforts to clean it up began a few days after the incident.
After cutting a portion of the bridge into a smaller piece and using multiple cranes, officials planned to remove the first segment of the bridge from the waterway less than a week after the collapse.
A complicating factor in clearing bridge debris is an underwater pipeline at the site of the Key Bridge.
Shortly after the bridge collapse, Baltimore Gas & Electric, the pipeline owners, reduced the pressure in the pipeline in order to lessen any possibility of contributing to the disaster.
Early after the collapse incident, Maryland Governor Wes Moore stressed that recovering the bodies of the workers killed in the collapse remained a priority, but that weather conditions, paired with debris in the water, made recovery diving unsafe.
As soon as it was safe for recovery divers to re-enter the water at the collapse site, they resumed efforts to recover the bodies.
In the meantime, local officials initiated work to clear the shipping channel, which would aid in the salvage process and later assist efforts to locate the four remaining bodies not yet recovered.
Given the immense recovery challenge facing local authorities, the concept of Unified Command, a major component of the US Incident Command System, was clearly seen as beneficial to guiding the incident recovery process.
Several agencies and organisations collaborated in the Key Bridge Response 2024 Unified Command to address the aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
The Key Bridge Response 2024 Unified Command encompassed the following agencies: US Coast Guard, Maryland Department of the Environment, Maryland Transportation Authority, Maryland State Police and Synergy Marine.
The responsibilities of the Bridge Response Unified Command are comprehensive.
They oversee all recovery efforts, including salvage operations, and ensure co-ordination among the involved entities.
The Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) played a pivotal role in underwater response and clearing the wreckage along the Fort McHenry Patapsco River Channel.
Additionally, commercial dive companies, under the supervision of the Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV), were deployed to work underwater and address the collapse.
The Key Bridge cleanup operation and its implications are a complicated and cumbersome challenge.
Local authorities established a recovery strategy and planned to remove debris and pieces from the bridge, refloat the ship, and then continue to remove the wreckage.
Slicing up some of the north sections of the bridge and removing them were initiated to accomplish that task, as well as opening up: “Two temporary restricted channels,” Governor Moore said, which will “get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse.
That will make other salvage operations easier and safer.”
Local officials outlined a three-step recovery plan, which includes clearing the 50-foot-deep, 700-foot-wide shipping channel, removing the bridge trusses resting on the cargo ship and floating them away, and clearing the riverbed of any remaining debris.
Each step of the recovery plan was being worked on simultaneously.
The specific timeline for the full cleanup process and bridge reconstruction remains uncertain, but will surely take a number of years.
By the end of May, the USACE planned to – and was successful in – reopening the original, 50-foot-deep channel that the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge currently blocks, allowing marine traffic to resume as usual.
WILLIAM (BILL) PETERSON is Senior Consultant for Strategic Government Resources, with lead responsibilities for fire, emergency medical and emergency management related executive searches.
Bill also serves as the primary technical expert for operational assessments and management consulting in these fields.
Previously, he was appointed Regional Administrator of the US Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA Region 6 in Denton, Texas, by President George W Bush. He is a Member of CRJ’s Advisory Panel
