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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. Four members of a maintenance crew working on the roadway were killed and another two are presumed dead, 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 waterway's closure has been estimated at $15 million per day. Background 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 legal 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. After the Panama Canal expansion began to allow the passage of 14,000-TEU vessels in 2016, the Maryland Port Administration installed new cranes and dredged the harbor to enable the port to accommodate the larger ships. 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 issued a report that noted that ship collisions with bridges are not infrequent and regularly cause damage that varies in significance, but do not typically result in catastrophic collisions that cause bridge collapses. Federal regulations for protecting bridges 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. While federal regulation requires that the design of national highway bridges conform to standards established by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), standards with minimum specifications for the strength of bridges in withstanding ship collisions were not promulgated by AASHTO until 1994. Collapse 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 .... Discover the Scott Keyes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Scott Keyes books.