For existing bridges, it’s up to their owners to assess their ability to withstand vessel strikes. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, for example, has not undergone a vessel collision analysis because of the “extensive tower protections already in place,” according to a Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District spokesperson. A spokesperson for the California Department of Transportation, which maintains many other bridges in the state, said it evaluates “bridges for numerous potential threats, including rigorous and strict seismic standards that are very similar to — and in some cases more powerful than — vessel collisions.”

Existing bridges can be retrofitted, in some instances. Engineers evaluated the Delaware Memorial Bridge’s fender protection system, which dates to the 1950s and 1960s, and determined that “additional protective measures were a priority,” a Delaware River and Bay Authority spokesperson said. The authority began a $95 million project in 2023 to reinforce the Wilmington bridge by adding eight dolphins.

In Canada, the Lions Gate Bridge and Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, both in Vancouver, are being retrofitted to “strengthen their resilience in the extremely unlikely event of vessel impact,” according to the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

There is “continual re-evaluation” of New York City’s bridges and “anti-collision infrastructure” was upgraded on some in 2008, 2021 and 2023, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesperson Aaron Donovan. All of the authority’s bridges “have been evaluated based on the current AASHTO Guide Specifications for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges, and either found to be in compliance or are currently being upgraded to meet or exceed the standard,” he said in a statement.

Whether or not existing bridges should be evaluated for vessel strikes is “a complex and controversial issue,” according to Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a Texas A&M University professor of maritime business administration whose research focuses on transportation and economics.

A key factor is money. It’s expensive to analyze bridges and to boost their protections.

But Nowak, chair of Auburn’s civil and environmental engineering department, said that extra attention should be given to bridges deemed vital — like the Key Bridge.

“The Baltimore bridge, as important as it is, should be inspected for [the] possibility of vessel collision,” he said.

Measures were taken to reinforce both the Key Bridge and the Bay Bridge in recent decades, but they focused upon intentional threats — like truck bombs — rather than the numerous cargo ships that regularly pass peacefully under the bridges, said Ports, the former state transportation secretary.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as attempts to blow up airplanes with bombs, authorities prepared for potential acts of terror. While commercial planes were hijacked Sept. 11 and crashed into buildings, officials believed a bombing was more likely than the seizure of a cargo ship to ram the bridge.

An accident, too, was hardly considered, simply because it happened so rarely.

Ports, who was deputy secretary of the transportation department in the mid-2000s, said “the intel at that time wasn’t a ship hitting a piling and knocking it down.”

“It just wasn’t,” he said. “It was all about bombs being attached to the bridge, whether it be near the base or above. So that was the focus.”

A precedent-setting disaster

Just a few days before its crash, the Port of Baltimore-bound Dali passed under the Key Bridge without incident, one of roughly 3,600 such transits a year.

But, as Knott noted in his 2016 presentation, a variety of problems can cause calamity: a pilot error, bad weather or a mechanical failure. There are 250 minor incidents of a vessel hitting a bridge each year in the U.S., his research found.

In Maryland, local pilots — equipped with knowledge of the waterways — navigate each cargo ship through the channel to transit the bridge.

Doing so is usually a “layup,” said James Mercante, president of New York’s Board of Commissioners of Pilots and head of the admiralty department at the litigation firm Gallo Vitucci Klar. But when a pilot loses the ability to guide the ship due to a malfunction, it’s akin to a “runaway train.”

The Dali appeared “like a Christmas tree being plugged out and plugged back in,” said Mercante, based on video he’d seen of the disaster. “There’s not much a pilot can do other than drop an anchor.”

The two pilots aboard, one of them an apprentice, did drop anchor, but could not prevent the collision.

Neither the Association of Maryland Pilots nor the state’s Board of Pilots, which issues licenses, has released their names. They are among 69 licensed pilots in the state. The pilots remain licensed as the incident is being investigated, according to a Maryland Department of Labor spokesperson.

The federal government has pledged to rebuild the Key Bridge, which is expected to be better protected than the original, perhaps with fortified piers or longer spans that could create more space between the piers and leave extra room for any errant ships. Other protections could be added, too: dolphins, fenders and gravel islands around supports that could force ships to run aground rather than reach a support.

Oftentimes, it takes a disaster to create change. When the Sunshine Skyway was knocked over in Tampa in 1980, it prompted new AASHTO guidelines. When a bridge in New York failed due in 1987 to the erosion of soil around its base, called scour, it altered how bridges were inspected. When a Minnesota bridge fell into the Mississippi River in 2007, it focused international attention upon the durability of bridges.

“This was unprecedented,” Nowak said. “I think the Baltimore bridge will now set precedents.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Darcy Costello contributed to this article.

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