Port of Baltimore closed indefinitely to ships after 1.6-mile Key Bridge collapses following maritime accident

The most severe U.S. bridge collision since the Tampa Skyway Bridge disaster in 1980 happened at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday near Baltimore where a 32,000-ton cargo ship Dali rammed a bridge over the Patapsco River in Baltimore, causing it to collapse.

The collapse of the 47-year-old, 1.6-mile Francis Scott Key Bridge has brought ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore, an important East Coast trade hub, to a halt. The port said maritime traffic is suspended “until further notice.”

“This does not mean the Port of Baltimore is closed,” the port said in a statement. “Trucks are being processed within our marine terminals.”

The port handled a record amount of cargo last year, making it the 11^th-biggest port in the nation ranked by total tons. The Port of Baltimore handled a record 52.3 million tons of international cargo, valued at $80.8 billion last year.

Several vehicles plunged into the 50-foot deep waters. The bridge collapse is threatening traffic chaos at one of the most important ports on the East Coast. No container ships were allowed into the Port of Baltimore in the wake of what was described by officials as a tragic accident that could have been far worse.

President Joe Biden said he expects that the federal government will pay for the “entire cost” of rebuilding the bridge, and called on Congress to support efforts to fund the repairs. He also said he would plan to visit the area “soon,” but did not give specifics.

As many as eight people were believed to have fallen into the water during the “catastrophic collapse,” according to Paul Wiedefeld, Maryland’s transportation secretary. All eight were part of a construction crew filling potholes on the bridge. Six of those people are still missing, he said. The crew apparently was able to halt traffic en route to the bridge to avoid a larger calamity.

The bridge, located about five miles from Fort McHenry, was finished in 1977 and named after the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” It was built to prevent trucks carrying hazardous materials from going under the twin tunnels in Baltimore.

Truck traffic is being diverted around the area indefinitely. The lone alternative for hazardous materials was a detour along the 51-mile Baltimore Beltway, or Interstate 895. Non-hazmat trucks can detour through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, which has a height limit of just 13.5 feet or the Fort McHenry Tunnel, which has a traditional 14.5 feet height limit.

Spokesman Kevin Cartwright of the Baltimore City Fire Department described it as “a mass casualty, multi-agency incident,” with as many as 20 people who could be in the frigid waters of the Patapsco River near the Chesapeake Bay.

There were reports that the Singapore-flagged Dali, a 32,000-ton ship built in 2015, lost power before hitting the Key Bridge. The Dali had around 4,900 containers on board at the time of the collision under a moonlit sky early Tuesday morning. It was en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The ship apparently lost power and issued a mayday call just before it crashed into the bridge. That caused a chain reaction that sent most of the 1.6-mile, steel truss bridge crashing into the river.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said the container ship was traveling at about 8 knots, a relatively rapid speed for those waters at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

According to marinetraffic.com, a maritime tracking service, the Dali had veered off course by 152 degrees before striking the bridge. The correct coordinates would have been around 140 degrees.

Various maritime tracking outlets reported at least 21 ships were in waters to the west of the collapsed bridge. About half of them are tugs. There were also at least three bulk carriers, one vehicle carrier and a small tanker.

An extended shutdown is going to bring chaos for travelers just ahead of the Easter holiday weekend on the already clogged corridor between New York and Washington.

The Baltimore port handled 847,158 autos and light trucks in 2023. That’s the most of any U.S. port for the 13th straight year, according to a state of Maryland website. The port also handled large volumes of imported sugar, gypsum and coffee, as well as exported coal.

Georgios Hatzimanolis, who analyzes global shipping for MarineTraffic, said he expects the bridge collapse to cause shipping delays. “We do expect there to be a ripple effect, but it’s a bit too early to say what the impact will be,” he told the Washington Post.

Ships heading to Baltimore with cargo to unload may instead go to ports in New Jersey or North Carolina, he said. The Dali is a 948-foot-long cargo vessel carrying goods for the shipping giant Maersk. It is owned by Synergy Marine Group.

The Dali was carrying containers from East Asia to the East Coast via the Panama Canal. It can haul the equivalent of about 9,700 steel boxes, about half the size of the industry’s largest ships.

“This is unbelievable,” Maryland State Sen. Johnny Ray Salling, whose district includes the bridge, told the Baltimore Banner. “More than anything, I’m praying for people and their families. I know there is going to be a loss of life, and that is devastating.”

Tuesday’s crash was at least the second in just over a month in which a container ship hit a major bridge.

On Feb. 22 in Guangzhou, a port in southern China, a much smaller container vessel hit the base of a two-lane bridge, causing vehicles to fall into the water. Officials said five people were killed.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, in an early morning press briefing, called the bridge collapse “an unthinkable tragedy. (The collapse) looked like something from an action movie.”