The National Transportation Safety Board is dispatching investigators, but governor said Francis Scott Key Bridge was sound
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has revived scrutiny not just of this specific structure but also the overall health of bridges across the US, many of which are considered to be in poor condition.
It’s so far unclear whether the downfall of the bridge, which was hit by a large container ship and crumpled into the Patapsco River early on Tuesday morning, was down to any fault in the structure itself.
Officials have said the ship issued a mayday as it went off course and seemed to lose power.
The National Transportation Safety Board is dispatching a team to investigate the disastrous collapse, which has left six people still unaccounted for. Wes Moore, Maryland’s governor, has said the bridge was “fully up to code”, while some experts have pointed out that the span, completed in 1977, was conceived before an age of supersized container ships.
Andrew Barr, an expert in civil and structural engineering at the University of Sheffield, said that “the video doesn’t show any obvious structural deficiencies with the bridge, but it will not have been designed to survive a head-on collision with such a large vessel”.
