Letter to the editor: Was Key Bridge upgraded?

OPINION:

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was designed and built in the 1970s. Back then a container ship carried less that 3,000 shipping containers. Today one container ship can carry over 20,000 containers. Cruise ship and oil tankers have likewise grown in size, many two to three times the size/tonnage of the Dali.

The Dali has a capacity of 10,000 containers. I am sure there are even larger container ships that use the Baltimore harbor.

When you design a bridge, you anticipate ship collisions and design protective buffering barriers around the bridge support pylon to absorb any such impact. It is the same principle as guardrails on a highway. 

The billion-dollar questions are, what size ships were the bridge’s 1970s-era pylon buffers designed to handle, and were they ever upgraded to handle the potential impact of larger vessels? If not, such large ships should have tugboats alongside until the bridge has been cleared. If there were no buffers of any kind when the Dali passed under the Key Bridge, that is tantamount to gross negligence. 

Cmdr. WAYNE L. JOHNSON

Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Navy (retired)

Alexandria, Virginia