Baltimore Port Disrupted by a Collapse of the Frederick S. Key Bridge and the World Trucking Corridor (Atlas)
William Washington works at a plant that makes cement board that is on the southern end of the bridge and he said his work depended on a constant delivery of supplies. Business will not be the same for a period of time because of the disruption to the plant.
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore has disrupted the transit route along the east coast, as well as shutting down a large section of the Baltimore port.
Sean McNally, a spokesman for the American Trucking Associations, said in an email that 4,900 trucks cross the bridge each day, with $28 billion in goods crossing annually.
The port handled a record amount of cargo last year, making it the 20th largest port in the nation by total tons. The volume of cars, trucks and vessels it handles makes it the most popular port in the US according to a statement by the governor.
Disruption at the port will affect the world, and can often result in ripple effects. We don’t know how long the port will be closed and that makes it difficult to project an economic toll.
I-695, Baltimore, as a bridge between the Key Bridge and the Gulf coast: Why does the American port have a good reputation?
Tinglong Dai, the Bernard T. Ferrari Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, knows the bridge well. He can see it from his office window in Baltimore.
He says that it’s an important bridge. It’s part of an busy highway, I-695, and has symbolic resonance too. He thinks the economic impacts of the disaster will be relatively short-term.
Some automakers got lucky. Volkswagen and BMW both use a terminal by the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor, in a part of the port that is not blocked off, and expect no impact beyond short-term traffic snarls for trucks today.
There is more to it than just getting a car off a ship. Things like installing accessories and inspecting vehicles are done at ports. And then you have to get them from the port to dealerships, which means you need trucks and drivers in place.
The shutdown will delay auto imports and exports, as companies look to find alternative ports, according to Dai.
The timing is not good. Attacks in the Red Sea and drought in the Panama Canal have already complicated global shipping. The disruptions are even worse because of the disaster that shut down the American port so abruptly.
Chris Rogers, the head of supply chain research at S&P Global Market Intelligence, notes that Baltimore’s port handled around 3% of imports along the east and Gulf coast.
Fortunately for the logistics industry, there are some alternative routes both for ships coming into port and trucks crossing the river. Two tunnels traverse the Patapsco and could take some of the goods and people that once traveled across the Key Bridge, which was also part of Maryland Route 695. Nearby ports, including Norfolk in Virginia, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and Savannah in Georgia, should be able to accept many of the goods usually handled by Baltimore’s port.
“We’re gonna get it up and running again as soon as possible,” Biden said. We’re going to do everything we can to help the workers who work there and protect the jobs that need to be protected.
The port has also received big investments to allow it to handle larger ships and more containers, as well as cut the carbon emissions from its equipment.
The port has also increasingly catered to large container ships like the Dali, the 948-foot-long cargo vessel carrying goods for the shipping giant Maersk that hit a pillar of the bridge around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. The Dali had spent two days in Baltimore’s port before setting off toward the 1.6-mile Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Coffee, sugar, coal and other materials are transported through the city’s port. It was the ninth-busiest port in the nation last year for receiving foreign cargo, in terms of volume and value.
What we know and don’t know about Baltimore’s Key Bridge Collapse: Norwegian Cruise Line’s Dali sinks into a river
The bridge’s collapse will also disrupt cruises traveling in and out of Baltimore. Norwegian Cruise Line last year began a new fall and winter schedule calling at the Port of Baltimore.
The construction workers fell into the river after they were hit on the bridge. Two were rescued, with one person in critical condition while the other person refused medical treatment, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said.
Six people are still missing. The US Coast Guard suspended its search and rescue efforts late Tuesday night because it believed that six people were dead, due to the time that had elapsed since the collapse and the temperature of the water. Recovery efforts will resume on Wednesday morning.
The ship, named the Dali and measuring nearly 1,000 feet, lost power as it began moving toward the bridge at about 8 knots, or 9.2 miles per hour. Those onboard issued a mayday, which gave authorities time to stop the flow of traffic on the bridge.
27 previous inspections have been conducted on the ship. In 2016, it sustained significant damage to its hull after hitting a dock while leaving a port in Antwerp, Belgium. The ship was found to have a problem with auxiliary machinery, according to the maritime safety site.
Authorities have not yet given information about the captain and how the ship ended up moving toward the bridge. The National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI and state officials are investigating.
Baltimore’s Key Bridge: A Deep and Patriotic History – The 1977 September 11, 1814 Battle Between Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay
The economic impact is a mystery. About $80 billion worth of cargo goes through the Port of Baltimore each year, including about 850,000 cars and trucks. In addition, the port gives away over three billion dollars in income, business and tax revenue, according to the state.
The public was able to see the structure on March 23, 1977. Its history is much deeper than that according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
Scholars believe it stood within 100 yards of the site where its namesake, Francis Scott Key, witnessed the failed British bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814.
The bombardment forced the British to abandon their land attack on Baltimore, which was a key point in the War of 1812. The two sides went on to reach a peace agreement later that year.
British warships bombarded the fort with thousands of exploding mortar shells, cannonballs, and rockets for more than 25 hours but only minor damage was done because it was so heavily fortified. The Americans raised their 30-by-42-foot garrison flag the next morning.
He wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” after seeing the flag rise, which was renamed “Defense of Fort McHenry”, and became the US’s national anthem in 1931.
Just southeast of the bridge are the ruins of Fort Carroll, a 3.4-acre, hexagonal island created in 1848 under the supervision of then-Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee to house a fort aimed at protecting Baltimore from naval attacks (since Fort McHenry was the only other military defensive structure between Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay up until that point).
Construction of the fort itself was never completed, though the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County says it featured impressive architecture like curved granite stairs and brick archways, and was originally home to 350 cannon ports, a blacksmith shop and a carpentry shop.
Source: Baltimore’s Key Bridge was built in the ’70s, but has a deep and patriotic history
Baltimore’s Key Bridge was built in the ’70s, but has a deep and patriotic history, according to Atlas Obscura
Torrential rains flooded the island in 1864 and rendered it vulnerable, and it was used in the decades that followed to store mines, hold seamen and as a pistol range.
The island was purchased by an attorney from Baltimore in the late 50’s, but never developed. The island is so overgrown that it’s become a bird sanctuary, according to Atlas Obscura.
The bridge is the outermost of three toll crossings of Baltimore’s Harbor, and the only one that’s not a tunnel. Vehicles carrying hazardous materials are not allowed in the tunnels, so it was built to give a route for them.
The project took several years to complete, and cost $110 million. The bridge became the final link in the Baltimore Beltway after opening in 1977.
The council said that the vessel lost all control and power around 600 yards from the bridge and flew into the pier at a speed of 6 knots. A protective concrete structure was destroyed.
Source: Baltimore’s Key Bridge was built in the ’70s, but has a deep and patriotic history
The aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge: Becky Grimes, a Marylander, works at an Amazon warehouse and drives an Amazon truck to work there
The hunt for the six construction workers who fell into the water after the bridge collapsed was the focus on Tuesday. They said discussions about how to rebuild would come later.
The president said that he wants the federal government to help reconstruct the bridge, but it would have to be supported by Congress.
“This is going to take some time,” he said. “The people of Baltimore can count on us, though, to stick with them at every step of the way until the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt.”
For Marylanders like Becky Grimes, who works at an Amazon warehouse near the eastern end of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the bridge’s sudden collapse immediately changed the shape of her day — and many days ahead.
She normally travels to work from the Key Bridge but it now takes her an extra half hour each way to drive through the city of Baltimore.
The port’s closure is costing the economy as a whole between $10 million and 15 million dollars per day, according to an economist at the university. And at least another $1 million a day in state and local taxes won’t be collected while the port is closed.
And the Key Bridge is a toll bridge that last year generated 7% of the total revenue for the state’s transportation authority, according to an analysis by Moody’s.
The Baltimore port is a good port, but it will lose jobs if it stays closed for a long time, as the Patapsco River does
“We’re the water,” he says. Baltimore is connected to the port, to water and to ships and vessels. That’s something that’s always been a part of Baltimore’s history.
Still, Irani says the port — which last year had its best year ever — should fully rebound. That’s in part because Baltimore’s port is about a day further inland than many others on the Eastern seaboard, putting it closer to points in the Midwest.
He doesn’t expect layoffs among workers at the port if it stays closed for a long time. Irani says it will likely create some jobs when the bridge collapses.
“You don’t want to say that, but in a disaster there is an opportunity for the rebuild.” So new construction jobs will likely come up because they need to build a new bridge,” he says.
The bridge’s absence will almost certainly have a longer impact on the small businesses located near its entrances on either side of the Patapsco River.
Joe Gold is the general manager of Key Brewing, a craft brewery in the town of Dundalk. The brewery is named after Francis Scott Key, the writer of the Star-Spangled Banner.
With the Key Bridge closed, the traffic that would have passed by to get on I-695 is now taking alternate routes — routes that don’t pass by Key Brewing’s taproom.
The Dali Bridge and the Implications for Stock Markets and Supply Chains: An Empirical Study of Covid’s Successes and Failures
“Everybody right now is saying, ‘We’re just going to reroute, it’s going to be fine,’” says Nada Sanders, an expert in supply chain management at Northeastern University. “If this lasts a while, it’s not going to be fine. It’s going to impact prices.”
The destruction of the bridge also underlines that boats are getting bigger. Trade transport volume across the seas has tripled in the past three decades. At nearly 1,000 feet long, the Dali is emblematic of the ballooning shipping industry.
Simple economics tells us that the more goods you can cram onto a ship, the better you save on costs. Zal is a supply chain analyst at UC San Diego. “This has been impacted to a great degree by Covid, and after Covid as well. The prices of cargo skyrocketed, the prices of containers skyrocketed. Everything just went through the roof.”