Debate emerges over whether modern protections could have saved Baltimore bridge

In this aerial image released by the Maryland National Guard, the cargo ship Dali is stuck under part of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after the ship hit the bridge, Tuesday, March 26, 2024, in Baltimore.

El-Tawil said a fendering system may have softened the 985-foot-long ship’s blow. Pilings anchored to the river bottom, known as dolphins, are another measure that could have helped to deflect the container ship Dali. And yet another potential protection would have been islands of rocks or concrete around the bridge’s supports.

“There’s a lot of debate taking place among the engineering community about whether any of those features could have had any role in a situation like this,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday at a White House briefing. The Skyway Bridge disaster in Tampa prompted a paradigm shift in design in the early 1980s, said Mark Luther, a University of South Florida oceanography professor and director of the USF Center for Maritime and Port Studies.

But he cautioned that governments will always be weighing the costs and the risks. And the protections put in place don’t always match up to the size of the disaster, even if the Key bridge was retrofitted with modern safety measures.

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