The National Transportation Safety Board said a proper risk assessment by the state of Maryland may have avoided the deadly Key Bridge collapse in 2024, and the agency warned that dozens of other bridges are at similar risk throughout the United States.
The warning comes as part of the NTSB’s ongoing investigation into the March 2024 allision of the containership Dali with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which killed six road workers.
In a new report, the NTSB said it conducted a vulnerability assessment of the Key Bridge and found that the risk level was almost 30 times greater than the acceptable threshold for bridges considered essential to the national highway network.
“Had the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) conducted such an assessment based on recent vessel traffic, they would have been aware of this elevated risk,” the NTSB said in the report.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore defended his state’s agency, according to local media reports, saying the bridge passed every federal safety assessment conducted over the past 30 years. Moore blamed what he termed “gross negligence” by the operator of the Dali, which lost power four times in the minutes leading up to the crash.
The NTSB identified 68 bridges in 19 states, managed by 30 separate owners, it says were likely not built to current engineering thresholds and have not undergone recent vulnerability assessments. These bridges have unknown levels of risk for catastrophic collapse from a vessel incident.
Among the bridges identified by the NTSB is the massive Huey P. Long Bridge spanning the Mississippi River in New Orleans. Opened in 1935, the 8,000-foot bridge hosts tens of thousands of vehicles and more than 15 Amtrak and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (NYSE: CP) trains each day. It’s owned by the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, a shortline subsidiary of the Port of New Orleans.
To address this safety issue, the NTSB is recommending that the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers establish an interdisciplinary team to provide guidance and assistance to bridge owners on evaluating and reducing collision risks.
The NTSB also wants the 30 identified bridge owners to calculate the probability of collapse during an incident and report to the panel if it exceeds current safety thresholds.
Bridge owners with structures above the threshold are advised to develop and implement comprehensive risk reduction plans, including short- and long-term strategies to reduce collapse probability, the NTSB said.
Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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