Hours after a critical report that claimed the Francis Scott Key Bridge was highly vulnerable and the state should have done more to prepare for a potential vessel collision, Maryland officials said the blame for the bridge’s collapse last year was solely on the owner of the freighter that crashed into it.
The Maryland Transportation Authority did not push back on the crux of the National Transportation Safety Board’s findings, which said that the state agency did not conduct an industry-standard risk computation that would have found the chances of a vessel strike causing the Key Bridge to collapse were 30 times the acceptable level.
The NTSB had to complete a risk assessment independently during its investigation into the reasons for the bridge collapse, the board’s chair, Jennifer Homendy, said Thursday. Homendy faulted the state for not collecting the necessary data to conduct the assessment and for not having completed a similar review of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge as of last fall.
The Maryland transportation agency said in their midnight response Friday that it had been conducting an evaluation of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge as of last fall and would provide an update to the NTSB within 30 days. In the Thursday report, NTSB officials had included the bridge’s east and west spans as two of the dozens of U.S. water crossings identified with an “unknown level of risk” if struck by a vessel. The federal officials said that Maryland transportation officials also did not have calculations, under American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials standards set in 1991 for vessel strikes, for the Bay Bridge assessment.
Safety “is always a top priority,” and Maryland officials have spent more than $175 million in the last decade on safety and security measures for just the Bay Bridge, the MDTA said.
“Over the past 50 years, hundreds of vessels transited under the Key Bridge without incident,” the MDTA said in its response. “The Key Bridge, like other bridges in America, was approved and permitted by the federal government and in compliance with those permits.”
The transportation authority, which is led by Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld, issued the only response so far from Gov. Wes Moore’s administration about the NTSB’s latest findings. Moore, who was the face of the state’s response and frequently evoked his close working relationship with President Joe Biden’s administration after the collapse, referred comment to the MDTA on Friday, according to a spokesman.
Synergy Marine Group, the Singapore-based company that operates the Dali, declined to comment on the details of the NTSB’s announcement.
“First and foremost, we once again extend our deepest sympathies to those impacted by this incident. We appreciate the update provided by the National Transportation Safety Board and recognise the importance of a thorough investigative process. As the official investigation is still ongoing, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this stage,” the group’s spokesperson said in a statement.
The state and other government officials are pursuing millions in damages from Synergy Marine Corporation and Grace Ocean. The MDTA said in its response Friday that the bridge collapse was due to the “gross negligence” of the ship’s owners and operators, who “put profits over safety.”
Senate President Bill Ferguson also focused the blame on the Dali when asked Friday about the NTSB’s findings that partially faulted the state.
The Baltimore Democrat said it was important to learn from the experience and take proactive measures moving forward. But it’s also “a distraction and pretty frustrating to try and rehash history about how this accident happened,” he said of the NTSB criticism.
“A repeat of an incident like the Dali hitting the Key Bridge is not my highest concern,” Ferguson said, adding that he was “very confident” in state transportation leaders’ abilities to take any safety concerns seriously.
Homendy, the NTSB leader, said Thursday there had been “no excuse” for Maryland officials not conducting the vulnerability assessments, partially because the state had been involved in setting the standards for the evaluations in the early 1990s and again in 2009. She said her board recommended that the owners of 68 bridges in 19 states assess how vulnerable their structures are to vessel collisions in light of the Key Bridge collapse and the NTSB investigation.
Beyond the Bay Bridge in Maryland, Cecil County’s Chesapeake City Bridge, which is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, was also on the list.
Asked last year about evaluations for ship strikes, officials said Maryland did not run those calculations in already-built bridges regularly. New bridges would be subject to evaluations set by the AASHTO standards, but the Key Bridge and Bay Bridge — respectively built in the 1970s and the early 1950s — both pre-date the specifications put in place in the 1990s.
The MDTA had conducted some studies that weighed vessel strikes after the 9/11 attacks, but those vulnerability assessments were largely focused on the prospect of a terrorist attack. Terrorism was quickly ruled out by federal officials on the day the Key Bridge collapsed nearly one year ago.
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