Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dali under one of the collapsed segments of the bridge
Date	March 26, 2024; 7 months ago (2024-03-26)
Time	1:28:49 a.m. EDT (05:28:49 UTC)
Location	Baltimore metropolitan area, Maryland, United States
Type	Bridge collapse
Cause	Loss of propulsion on ship, leading to allision with pier and subsequent collapse of the bridge truss
Deaths	6
Non-fatal injuries	2+
Property damage	Collapse of bridge spans Damage to Dali and its cargo At least seven vehicles submerged

On March 26, 2024, at 1:28 a.m. EDT (05:28 UTC), the main spans and the three nearest northeast approach spans of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Patapsco River in the Baltimore metropolitan area of Maryland, United States, collapsed after the container ship Dali struck one of its piers. Six members of a maintenance crew working on the roadway were killed, while two more were rescued from the river.

The collapse blocked most shipping to and from the Port of Baltimore. Maryland Governor Wes Moore called the event a "global crisis" that had affected more than 8,000 jobs. The economic impact of the closure of the waterway has been estimated at $15 million per day.

Maryland officials have said they plan to replace the bridge by fall 2028 at an estimated cost of $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion.

Background

Dali, though larger than most earlier ships, carries less than half the cargo of today's largest container ships. Bigger ships can cause bigger disasters, such as the 1,300-foot vessel in the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was a steel arch-shaped continuous truss bridge, the second-longest in the United States and third-longest in the world. Opened in 1977, the 1.6-mile (2.6 km; 1.4 nmi) bridge ran northeast from Hawkins Point, Baltimore, to Sollers Point in Dundalk in Baltimore County, Maryland. Before being damaged, it carried Interstate 695, a beltway around Baltimore; its four lanes (two in each direction) were used by some 34,000 vehicles each day, including 3,000 trucks, many of which hauled hazardous materials barred from the two harbor tunnels.

The bridge crossed one of the busiest shipping routes in the United States: the lower Patapsco River, which connects the Port of Baltimore to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. In 2023, the port handled more than 444,000 passengers and 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo valued at $80 billion. It was the second-largest U.S. port for coal, and had been the leading port for automobiles and light trucks for 13 straight years, handling more than 847,000 vehicles in 2023. It employed 15,000 people and indirectly supported 140,000 others, annually helping to generate $3.3 billion in wages and salaries, $2.6 billion in business revenue, and $400 million in state and local tax revenue.

MV Dali is a container ship registered in Singapore, and at the time of the collision (in maritime terms, allision) was operated by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd, both based in Singapore. A Neopanamax vessel completed in 2015, Dali has a length of 980 feet (300 m), a 157-foot (48 m) beam, and a 40-foot (12.2 m) draft. Danish shipping company Maersk chartered Dali upon its delivery. Once in service, Dali had undergone 27 inspections at ports globally, including two in 2023: one in June in San Antonio, Chile, where a fuel-pressure gauge was repaired; and the second in September by the U.S. Coast Guard in New York, which found no problems.

In March 2024, Dali was crewed by 20 Indian nationals and one Sri Lankan. The ship traveled from Panama to New York, arriving on March 19, then sailed to the Virginia International Gateway in Portsmouth, Virginia. The ship left Virginia on March 22 and the following day arrived in Baltimore, where it underwent engine maintenance. An anonymous source told the Associated Press that an alarm on the ship's refrigerated containers went off while the ship was docked, likely due to an inconsistent power supply.

When the bridge was completed in 1977, the largest container ships could hold 2,000 to 3,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers. In the 2000s, the governments of Maryland and Baltimore, which relied on port operations to replace lost manufacturing jobs, seized the opportunity provided by the Panama Canal's expansion: they installed new cranes and dredged the harbor to accommodate the up-to-14,000-TEU vessels that began passing through the canal in 2016. At the time of its collision, Dali was loaded nearly to its 10,000-TEU capacity with 4,700 forty-foot containers.

In 1980, a ship roughly one-third the size of Dali struck and lightly damaged one of the bridge's piers. After the bridge collapsed in 2024, anonymous former agency officials told The Washington Post that the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) did not consider studying the possibility of a collision with a larger ship, and instead spent decades studying how terrorists might attack the bridge after the September 11 attacks or inspecting for structural flaws similar to those that caused the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in 2007. In 2018, the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure noted that ships frequently hit bridges but rarely destroy them; between 1960 and 2015, thousands of barges and ships collided with U.S. bridges, destroying 18 of them.

Federal regulations require national highway bridges to conform to standards established by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, but AASHTO did not specify how strong bridges should be to withstand ship collisions until 1994. Federal regulations for bridge protection systems from ship collisions were updated in 1991 after the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse in 1980, but existing bridges were exempted by a grandfather clause, and the Francis Scott Key Bridge piers lacked the level of fender system or island barriers required of newer bridges. However, engineering experts debate whether such bridge protection systems could have prevented the collapse given Dali's size. The preliminary NTSB report noted that inspections conducted in March 2021 and May 2023 to National Bridge Inspection Standards found the bridge in satisfactory condition.

Collapse

Upstream view of the bridge in 2015; Dali hit the fourth pier from left.

MV Dali immobilized by the wreckage

Dali left the Port of Baltimore at 12:44 a.m. EDT (04:44 UTC) on March 26, 2024, bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka. The ship had two local harbor pilots on board. Following standard operating procedure in Baltimore, tugboats that piloted the ship from its berth were released once the ship was in the channel. At 1:24 a.m., the ship suffered a "complete blackout" and began to drift out of the shipping channel; a backup generator supported electrical systems but did not provide power to the propulsion system. At 1:27 a.m., a mayday call was made from the ship, notifying the Maryland Department of Transportation that the crew had lost propulsion and control of the vessel and that a collision with the bridge was possible.

One of the pilots requested that traffic be stopped from crossing the bridge immediately. The ship's lights went out and came on again some moments later; then again went off and returned just before impact as smoke once again began rising from the funnel. At the pilot's request, the MDTA Police dispatch asked officers to stop traffic in both directions at 1:27:53 a.m.; outer loop (eastbound/northbound) traffic was stopped at the south side after 20 seconds. Inner loop (westbound/southbound) traffic was stopped at the north side by 1:28:58 a.m., around the time of the collapse. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) reported that the ship dropped anchor before hitting the bridge, as part of its emergency procedures.

At 1:28:45 a.m., the ship struck the southwest pier of the central truss arch span, at roughly 8 knots (9.2 mph; 15 km/h). AIS data showed the ship traveling at a speed of 8.7 knots (10.0 mph; 16.1 km/h) at 1:25 a.m. before departing the channel and slowing to 6.8 knots (7.8 mph; 12.6 km/h) by the time of the collision two minutes later.

Within seconds of the collision, the bridge broke apart in several places, leaving sections protruding from the water and the roadway's approaches cut off. The main span fell onto the ship's bow and a section of it came to rest there. The bridge strike and partial collapse were recorded on video.

Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time it collapsed, though initially no one was believed to be inside them. Workers were repairing potholes on the bridge and were in their vehicles on a break at the time of the collapse. A resident living near the bridge recalled being awakened by deep rumbling that shook his residence for several seconds following the collapse, which he said "felt like an earthquake".

Emergency teams began receiving 911 calls at 1:30 a.m. The Baltimore Police Department was alerted to the collapse at 1:35 a.m. Large rescue and recovery efforts were begun. The Coast Guard deployed boats and a helicopter as part of rescue efforts. Fifty public safety divers in eight teams were dispatched to search for people who fell into the river.

Timeline

This timeline is based mostly on the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary analysis of events from the ship's voyage data recorder and the Maryland Transportation Authority Police log.

Damage

The collapsed portion of the bridge comprises the three spans under the metal truss, and three others to the northeast (left of the images, in Dundalk, Maryland; right is Hawkins Point, Baltimore).

2016 photo of the pier struck by the ship

Sentinel-2 satellite images of Baltimore Harbor

March 25, 2024: one day before the collapse

April 14, 2024: 19 days after the collapse

The force of the impact with the pier was estimated to be between 27 and 52 million pounds-force (120 and 230 MN) by The New York Times writers, who used equations from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials publication Guide Specifications and Commentary for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges. In comparison, Saturn V rockets generated 7.9 million pounds-force (35 MN) of thrust at launch.

The bridge's continuous truss relied on its overall structure to maintain integrity; in engineering terms, it was fracture critical, meaning it had no redundancy against removal of support of any particular part of it. The collision destroyed its southwest main truss pier, causing the south and central spans to collapse, which led to the collapse of a northern span. Each failure sequence took seconds, and within 30 seconds the entirety of the trussed spans, and three others, had fallen.

The bridge was determined to be fully compliant with the building code when it collapsed. The bridge had dolphin and fender protection against ship impact, but these protections were insufficient.

Of Dali's 4,700 shipping containers, 13 were damaged in the collision. Two fell into the water, neither of which carried hazardous substances. Dali sustained hull damage above the water line and the ship was impaled by remnants of the bridge superstructure (estimated to be 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of bridge wreckage), which pressed it against the channel floor. The ship remained watertight, and the shipping company initially claimed there was no water pollution directly from the ship. Authorities installed 2,400 feet (730 m) of water containment booms around the ship after a sheen was detected in the waterway, which was believed to have been produced by 21 US gallons (17 imp gal; 79 L) of oil that leaked from a bow thruster on the ship. On March 27, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced an investigation into a hazmat spill resulting from breached containers aboard Dali, including some of the 56 containers that carried about 764 tons of hazardous materials: primarily corrosives, flammable substances (including lithium batteries), and Class 9 materials.

Casualties

NOAA reported a water temperature of 47 °F (8 °C) at the time of the collapse.

Two people were rescued from the river: one was in "very serious" condition and the other uninjured. One of those rescued was a Mexican national. The lawyer of one survivor said his client, who was in his car as the bridge collapsed, escaped by manually rolling down his window.

Six people, all part of the maintenance crew working on the bridge, were reported missing and presumed dead after a Coast Guard search was suspended. Their bodies were all recovered, from underwater, by May 7.

On March 27, the bodies of a 35-year-old Mexican national and a 26-year-old Guatemalan national were found inside a red pickup truck 25 feet (7.6 m) below the mid-section of the bridge.

On April 5, the body of a 38-year-old Honduran national was recovered from a submerged vehicle.

On April 14, another body was recovered from a submerged construction vehicle. The family of the victim requested the identity of the deceased be withheld.

By that point, the underwater searches had found five submerged vehicles, including three passenger vehicles and a transit mixer. On April 30, the Maryland State Police announced that they had identified "areas of interest" where the bodies of the two remaining missing victims could be. These areas had been inaccessible to recovery crews, before April 13.

On May 1, a fifth body, belonging to Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, 49, of Glen Burnie, was recovered from a red truck that had been among the missing construction vehicles.

On May 7, the sixth and final body, belonging to José Mynor López, 37, of Baltimore, was recovered.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations require that construction companies keep skiffs available at construction sites over waterways. Coast Guard officials said they did not know whether the company that employed the highway workers had one available. Satellite imagery at the time of the bridge collapse does not appear to show one present. The company declined to respond to press inquiries about whether a boat was available.

Dali's crew and the two pilots sustained no serious injuries. One crew member was slightly injured and required some stitches. Groups such as the Baltimore International Seafarers' Center made efforts to support the crew members as they remained on the boat, including providing them with Wi-Fi hotspots.

Investigation

Officials coordinate response and rescue efforts at the Maryland Transportation Authority headquarters on the day of the collapse

The NTSB began an investigation and sent a team to the site. The agency was expected to release a preliminary report two to four weeks after the collapse, and later issue urgent safety recommendations, while its investigation could take between 12 and 24 months. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was also deployed to the scene, but said that terrorism was not suspected in the incident. On March 27, a Unified Command Joint Information Center was established to coordinate the investigation and salvage. The command includes members from primary stakeholders, including the U.S. Coast Guard, Maryland Department of the Environment, MDTA, Maryland State Police, and Synergy Marine.

As the flag state, Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) and the Maryland Port Administration sent personnel to Baltimore to help in investigations. The MPA said it offered support to the NTSB and the Office of Marine Safety.

NTSB personnel boarded the ship late on March 26 and obtained the voyage data recorder (VDR), which would help investigators develop a timeline of events leading up to the collision. Several possible factors were being considered, including the possibility that contaminated fuel or an improper grade of fuel had caused the loss of the ship's power. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on April 10, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the agency would not likely issue its preliminary report until the first week of May. She said investigators were gathering data about the ship's electrical system, examining its circuit breakers with the assistance of Dali shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries, and comparing the bridge's design and pier protection to current regulatory standards.

On April 15, FBI agents searched Dali in a criminal investigation to establish whether the crew left the port aware that the ship had problems with its electrical or mechanical systems. On May 8, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that the FBI investigation is looking for potential violations of the Seaman's Manslaughter Statute, which can carry up to a 10-year prison sentence for ship officers, crew, ship owners, and charterers when violations result in deaths.

The preliminary NTSB report was released on May 14. The report stated that the ship had two power outages in port: the first occurred 10 hours before departure when an engine damper mistakenly closed by a crew member when working on the diesel engine scrubber system prevented exhaust gas from flowing out of the ship stacks caused the engine to stall; the second outage occurred when insufficient fuel pressure caused the ship's backup generator to shut off—which led the crew to modify the ship's electrical configuration by switching from a transformer and breaker system that had been in use for several months to a different system on the accident voyage. However, the report did not draw a connection between the in-port outages and the voyage outages, and stated that the NTSB's investigation of the electrical configuration was ongoing. The report also stated that fuel testing found no evidence of contamination. In testimony before the House Transportation Committee on May 15, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy stated that the in-port power outages and voyage outages were "mechanically distinct" and that switching circuit breakers after an outage is a common practice, but that changing the electrical configuration may have resulted in the voyage outages.

Impact

The debris from the collapse blocked maritime access to virtually the entirety of the Port of Baltimore; nearly 30 ships had signaled the port as their destination, and more than 40 were trapped. Only one part of the Port of Baltimore was unaffected: the Tradepoint Atlantic marine terminal at Sparrows Point, on the seaward side of the Key Bridge. Tradepoint Atlantic said on April 3 that it began preparing for an influx of redirected ships and estimated that it would unload and process 10,000 vehicles over the next 15 days.

Maryland governor Wes Moore declared a state of emergency shortly thereafter, and Maryland Secretary of Transportation Paul Wiedefeld ordered the suspension of all shipping to and from the Port of Baltimore until further notice; trucking facilities remained operational. At 4:15 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a 5-nautical-mile (5.8 mi; 9.3 km) temporary flight restriction around the incident site. Maersk, which chartered the vessel, saw the price of its shares decline by about 2% when trading opened at Nasdaq Copenhagen on March 26.

Supply chain disruptions

Map of the three temporary channels as of April 20

The collapse blocked access to all of Baltimore's marine terminals except the Sparrows Point terminal, closing them to shipping. This led shipping lines to seek alternate ports for ships en route to Baltimore and forced shippers to attempt to arrange for land transportation from those ports before unloaded cargoes would incur detention and demurrage charges—i.e., late fees. Four shipping lines—CMA CGM, then COSCO and Evergreen on March 26, and Mediterranean Shipping Company on March 28—declared force majeure, allowing them to terminate their contracts of carriage with clients once cargo is delivered to diversion ports. Maersk, however, announced that it would arrange transport for cargo from diversion ports to its clients.

Stellantis and General Motors said they would divert vehicle imports to other ports, and Toyota reported that some of its exports could be affected. The bridge collapse also isolated the terminals of Mercedes-Benz, CSX at Curtis Bay, and Consol Energy. On April 1, CSX announced a new route for diverted Baltimore imports arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey; the railroad completed its first shipments of diverted cargo three days later. On April 3, Norfolk Southern announced its own dedicated service to haul diverted imports from New York to Baltimore.

While economists said the port closure was unlikely to reduce U.S. economic growth, Dun & Bradstreet estimated the weekly cost of the supply chain disruptions caused by the port closure to be $1.7 billion. On March 28, New York governor Kathy Hochul and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy offered the use of ports in their states in handling affected cargo shipments to minimize supply chain disruptions.

On May 7, Maersk North America's president said the company would decide within five to 10 days whether to restart operations in Baltimore if the channel were reopened by the end of the month.

Local effects

Exit 1 (MD 173; seen in 2019), where eastbound I-695 traffic is forced to exit

I-695 remains closed between the MD 173 and MD 157 interchanges. Most traffic is detoured along I-95 and I-895, which cross Baltimore Harbor in tunnels. Vehicles that are carrying hazardous loads or are too tall for the tunnels are detoured along the western section of I-695, bypassing from the north and west the entire city of Baltimore. Warnings of traffic delays were initially issued to motorists as far away as Virginia.

Cruise ships originally bound for Baltimore docked in other cities. For example, Carnival Legend docked in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 31 and seventy buses took passengers back to Maryland. On April 4, Vision of the Seas was diverted to Norfolk, where its 2,200 passengers boarded buses for Baltimore.

Governor Moore said that 8,000 jobs could be affected by the bridge's collapse and called the disaster a "global crisis". The waterway's closure is causing an estimated daily loss of $15 million. On March 30, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced that it would make low-interest and long-term loans of up to $2 million to small businesses hurt by the bridge collapse in the Mid-Atlantic states, and the SBA received 500 applications by April 4.

Governor Wes Moore signs the PORT Act into law on April 9, 2024

In the Maryland General Assembly, Bill Ferguson, the president of the Maryland Senate, and state delegate Luke Clippinger introduced emergency legislation to provide money to workers and local businesses affected by the disaster. After discussions with the Moore administration, Ferguson added a provision to establish a state scholarship for the children of the maintenance workers killed in the collapse. On April 8, the General Assembly passed a bill to draw upon the state's rainy day fund to pay port employees who were thrown out of work and are not covered by state unemployment insurance; the governor may also use the fund to help some small businesses avoid layoffs and to encourage companies that shift to other ports to return to a reopened Baltimore port. Governor Moore signed the bill the following day. On April 12, Moore issued an executive order under the law to start a $12.5 million program operated by the Maryland Department of Labor to prevent layoffs by port businesses. On June 14, multiple state agencies announced that they would stop accepting applications for the temporary worker and business assistance programs implemented by the PORT Act on June 28.

Republican state senators Bryan Simonaire and Johnny Ray Salling introduced another bill to allow the governor to declare a year-long state of emergency after damage to critical infrastructure, but it would also have eliminated the authority to seize private property for government use, as now allowed under a state of emergency; Simonaire withdrew the bill after discussions with the Moore administration.

Litigation and insurance

Barclays, Morningstar DBRS, Fitch Ratings, and the Insurance Information Institute estimated that the insured losses from the collision could range from $1 billion to $4 billion, surpassing the losses from the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster. Lloyd's of London chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown said the claims could become the largest marine insurance loss in history. Wrongful death liabilities were estimated to total $350 million to $700 million. Moody's Ratings officials said most claims would likely fall on reinsurance companies, about 80 of which provide some $3 billion in coverage to Dali's insurers. The Maryland state government's insurance for the bridge covers up to $350 million for damage, while the bridge cost $60 million to construct in 1977 (about $290 million in 2022).

On April 1, Grace Ocean Private and Synergy Marine Group filed a joint petition in the Maryland U.S. District Court to limit their liability to about $43.6 million under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. Chief judge James K. Bredar is overseeing the proceedings. Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine are represented by Duane Morris and Blank Rome. The legal process could last up to a decade and has been described as likely being "one of the most contentious marine insurance cases in recent decades". On April 17, Grace Ocean Private filed a general average declaration to require cargo owners to cover part of the salvage costs.

On April 15, Baltimore's mayor and city council hired personal injury firm Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky and civil rights firm DiCello Levitt to pursue legal action against Grace Ocean, Synergy Marine, and Maersk. On April 22, city officials filed papers accusing Grace Ocean Private and Synergy Marine of negligence, claiming the ship was unseaworthy and had an incompetent crew who ignored warnings of an inconsistent power supply before leaving port. If the vessel is proved unseaworthy, through mechanical or human deficiencies, the judgement will void the entities insurances.

On April 25, a Baltimore-based publishing company sued Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine in a class-action lawsuit that seeks damages for local businesses whose revenues were reduced by the collapse.

On May 2, officials at Willis Towers Watson, the bridge's insurance broker, said that Chubb Limited, the bridge's insurer, was in the process of approving a $350 million insurance claim for the state government.

Crew

On May 15, the BBC reported that the 21 crew members of Indian and Sri Lankan nationality remained below decks on Dali. They had not been permitted to disembark as they did not have the necessary entry visas or shore passes, and the FBI had confiscated their mobile phones.

See also

• List of bridge failures
• Severn Railway Bridge accident – a similar incident in the UK in 1960
• Tasman Bridge disaster – a similar incident in Australia in 1975
• Almö Bridge collapse – a similar incident in Sweden in 1980