ATLANTA — Six people are now presumed dead after a bridge in Baltimore collapsed when a cargo ship that lost power rammed into it, causing a tragedy early Tuesday morning.
Many people wonder how often a similar incident could occur. An Atlanta structural engineer said the event is rare because of how bridges are designed, but not entirely impossible.
“Everything’s a probabilistic design. As much as we take that into account, there’s no way to account for everything,” said Tim Schmitz with Structural Engineering Solutions.
According to the engineer, most bridges are designed with safety precautions in order to minimize the risk of catastrophes.
“This is one of those extremely, extremely low probable events that, unfortunately, has had catastrophic results,” he added.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built in the 1970s, nearly half a century ago. Now Baltimore’s port is busier, and the container ships are bigger than they were before.
A spokesperson for the National Transportation and Safety Board told 11Alive that the cargo ship, the Dali, weighs roughly 95,000 tons and is 300 meters long. For perspective, if someone were to turn the cargo ship on its side, it would be compared to one of Atlanta’s tallest skyscrapers.
Schmitz said anything of that magnitude would likely cause significant damage, especially because of its design.
“There are not very many structures if you take out a significant, some structure element that, that will, that will survive, especially something of this age and that type,” the engineer added.
According to Schmitz, this bridge had four dolphins, also referred to as key structures, meant to withstand ship impact.
The investigation will certainly look at those and determine whether any design changes could prevent a similar event in the future.