2:00 p.m. ET, April 5, 2024
Main US bridges might be susceptible to ship collisions, together with one simply downstream from Key Bridge
From CNN's Casey Tolan, Isabelle Chapman, Curt Devine and Yahya Abou-Ghazala
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 2021.
Adobe Inventory
Earlier than its disastrous collapse final week, the Francis Scott Key Bridge served as an economically essential gateway: Hundreds of container ships crossing from the Atlantic to Baltimore’s port handed below the bridge’s decades-old span.
However the now-ruined construction isn’t the one bridge alongside that very same key delivery route: Twenty miles downstream, large container ships headed to Baltimore additionally cross below the Chesapeake Bay Bridge close to Annapolis.
And in keeping with consultants who reviewed its design for CNN, it may be prone to collapse if a kind of vessels rammed into it.
A number of of the 4-mile-long Bay Bridge’s concrete piers, which sit in the midst of the delivery channel, seem susceptible to the kind of ship collision that destroyed the Key Bridge, consultants stated.
The bridge is “lacking in safety measures,” stated Adel ElSafty, an engineering professor on the College of North Florida, who stated the construction must be reassessed in mild of the Key Bridge collapse. “It could very much be vulnerable to a ship impact.”
CNN reviewed the protecting design options of greater than a dozen main US bridges that cross delivery channels resulting in the largest ports within the nation.
Most have stronger defenses in opposition to ship collisions than the Key Bridge had, comparable to extra sturdy fender techniques or bigger concrete buildings designed to deflect oncoming vessels, in keeping with statements from native officers and interviews with greater than a half-dozen structural engineering consultants.
However a handful of different bridges, together with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, have much less vital defenses, in keeping with consultants – probably inserting them in danger as more and more massive container ships cross below them.
Learn extra about what different US bridges are dealing with.
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