The only thing more shocking than the total collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore last week was the number of speculative conjectures stated by elected and appointed officials in the hours after it was struck by a container ship. Federal and state officials almost immediately declared it had not been a terrorist attack. While there has so far been no evidence whatsoever showing the crash was intentional, there had not been adequate time to investigate sufficiently to entirely rule it out at the time they made that declaration. More importantly, the claim was made - and then repeated ad nauseum by the media - that any type of bridge would have completely collapsed in this scenario. An investigative report published by The Washington Post this past Saturday has determined that claim to be false.
A collapse of a similar bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida following a ship collision in 1980 resulted in federal authorities alerting highway agencies to review all bridges, to find out how many might have the same vulnerability, the Post learned. An engineer with the Maryland Department of Transportation confirmed to The Baltimore Sun that year that the Key Bridge was one of the state's bridges that fell into that category. "I'm talking about the main supports, a direct hit - it would knock it down," he told the Sun.
Despite learning this in 1980, state and federal officials took no action to construct barriers or islands around the Key Bridge's support columns. "They had all this time to realize the danger, and it appears to me they did nothing about it," Florida attorney Steve Yerrid told the Post. Yerrid was a lawyer for the pilot of the ship that struck the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay. "Maryland officials should have moved aggressively to protect their bridges from collisions, despite the costs," the Post cited Yerrid as saying.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy also put to rest the idea that "no bridge could have survived this crash." She said the bridge designs of today have "redundancy" built in, so that the loss of one pier doesn't cause a total collapse. In contrast, Maryland officials knew that the Key Bridge was among the thousands of "fracture critical" bridges in America. "Fracture critical" means that "if one key piece fails, part or all of the bridge would likely collapse," the Post reported.
America's crumbling infrastructure is often in the news, but rarely in state and federal budgets. We know that trillions of dollars that could have been spent on new bridges and highway maintenance, high speed rail, utility networks, healthcare, poverty, housing for the homeless and other essential needs have instead gone to costly wars overseas, as just one example of nonsensical spending priorities.
Senator Chuck Schumer is reportedly having difficulty finding $10 million to correct major infrastructure issues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus right here in Gaithersburg, deficiencies that are currently threatening national security and the health of NIST employees. But the U.S. government had no difficulty finding $75 billion for the Ukraine War, at least $3 trillion for the Iraq War, $2.3 trillion for the Afghanistan War, $2.2 billion of weapons for rebels against the government of Syria, $17 billion on a military adventure in the former Yugoslavia, a $100 million drone base in Niger...the list goes on and on, and most of the money goes into the private profit pockets of the military-industrial complex. None of those outlays has resulted in a successful geopolitical victory for the United States.
At the same time, Maryland elected officials have spent big and repeatedly raised taxes since 1980. The completely-preventable collapse of the Key Bridge forces us to now evaluate just which frivolous things - and campaign donors - our representatives have spent all that tax revenue on instead.
In many photo-ops over the last week, our elected officials have striven to give us the impression they are here to save us from an economic catastrophe that also cost at least six human lives. As the Post report proves, they were actually the problem in the first place, having failed to act to modify or replace the Key Bridge for 44 years.
19 comments:
The bridge was built in the 70s when ships were smaller and there were no such requirements about preventing this type of accident. Newer bridges have bollards in front of the bridge supports to block this.
It all came down to risk vs expense. The same reason they don't use tugboats -- it's cheaper not to use them, though it's safe to use a tug (both the tug engine and ship engine would have to fail to have such an accident).
What a poor, disturbing attempt at politicizing this issue.
Yes, the Iraq War was a waste of trillions of dollars. No, that doesn't mean billions should have been spent on an unnecessary new bridge just because the old one couldn't withstand 100,000 tons of force smashing into it.
Gephyrophobia.
Russia has been America's staunchest geopolitical rival for at least 75 years. The war in Ukraine has cut Russia's army by more than half, without losing a single US soldier. Russia is stuck. Supplying our older weapon systems to Ukraine where they are gutting Russia's army/navy/air forces while paying US contractors to resupply newer systems to our defense stockpiles, may be the single greatest ROI in military history. Furthermore, Arms exports by the USA went up by 17 percent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while those by Russia went down by 53 percent.
Your argument conflates infrastructure and defense spending as if its binary. In reality, we spend a great deal of money on both- as we should- this country runs at a yearly deficit for a reason. Officials should certainly have done more to safeguard the Key Bridge if it was a known issue since the 80s. However, your arguments connect a singular awful event to overall defense, tax, and social spending are just one strawman after another. Overall, the vast majority of spending is very productive for the country, state, and local residents. Yes, taxes may rise...but that could certainly be obviated if there were not so many loopholes for decabillionaires, billionaires, and centimillionaires. The concentration of wealth over the past 50 years is staggering, leading to tax revenue shortfalls that are largely a result of the top 20% class largely avoiding paying anywhere close to their share of taxes. Everyone suffers as a result as budgets tighten, national borrowing grows, and projects like fixing the Key Bridge move to the back burner.
It would bolster your argument to address the tremendous weight of waste, fraud, and abuse inherent in our ballooning and overreaching Government(s) (read: particularly entitlements and worthless and fraudulently managed Gubmint programs.
11:11 PM Just because someone is selected via the process of election the person does not go through a transformation.
The information and background presented in Robert's article is "spot-on", and illustrates a long term problem with our political system and our politicians.
It is an open secret that government is reactive not proactive.
It not a coincidence that the opposite of progress is congress. . .
4:25: I would say that China is much more our rival than Russia. It is directly competitive with us economically, including its industrial and technology sectors. Whereas Russia's strength is more in its tremendous resources, an advantage we in America are also blessed with.
Russia has been and would be manageable, as long as we respect their sphere of influence. We have not, and have encroached with NATO and the EU now up to their borders. America would be right to react the same way if Canada and Mexico announced they were joining the Warsaw Pact in 1968.
America and Russia would never go to war against each other under normal circumstances, during the Cold War or today. Our nuclear arsenals represent mutually-assured-destruction, meaning no sane leader would ever launch them.
However, our proxy war against Russia ironically raises the risk of an accidental start to WWIII. And under the warmongers' fantasy of Ukraine defeating Russia (I don't believe even our top military leaders would claim that with a straight face), there is a chance Russia might employ nuclear weapons if it was actually facing defeat.
Why would we risk armageddon in either case? It's in our national interest to resolve this war diplomatically as soon as possible, and start spending the peace dividend we had earned in 1991 on our many problems at home.
4:10: I'm not sure I understand your argument. You're saying that protecting or replacing a bridge our elected officials knew would completely collapse if bumped by a ship, that stood over a channel heavily traveled around the clock by large cargo ships, was "unnecessary?" In reality, it would have been money wisely and well-spent, and literally a life-saving expenditure.
2:31: Wouldn't you agree, as I noted in my response to 4:10 above this sentence, that the risk of collapse was actually incredibly high given the ship traffic using this route 24 hours a day?
Agree 100 percent. It's important to note that just as we (JFK) didn't want the Soviets in Cuba, Putin doesn't want NATO at his border either. Zelenskyy is the 'agent provocateur.'
"the risk of collapse was actually incredibly high"
Uh, no. It's not some miracle that 47 years passed without an incident. It took a complete freak set of circumstances that involved power loss at the exact wrong moment and drifting to the exact wrong spot for this to happen. Yes, the loss of 6 lives is tragic, but spending billions of dollars replacing a functional bridge to prevent an accident that was insanely improbable would be just an incomprehensibly dumb waste of taxpayer dollars.
5:08: Rugged George F. Will individualism is probably not the wisest strategy when lives and national security depend on none of thousands of big boats ever moving slightly off course in-between the supports of a flimsy bridge.
Robert, I don't agree with the tone of your conspiracy theory laden diatribe, nor your claim that protecting democracy across the globe has not gained (or at least maintained) anything, that's actually a laughable claim.... but I do agree that "dolphins" should be installed around highly susceptible bridges. Dolphins are basically concrete masses that slow down errant ships. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/04/1242605876/baltimore-bridge-collapse-dolphins
It's millions, not billions, per bridge and offers protection.
It's like those new bollards in front of 7-11's. They won't stop everything, but it's something. Oh and we can save democracy in Europe at the same time we protect the slushie machines.
With all due respect (and sincere thanks for this forum), that's why such harbors have local Harbor Pilots to come aboard and navigate the nuances. Apparently the powers that be in Charm City waived the requirement to have a Harbor Pilot on their exit. This accident was either 'an act of God' or something nefarious which transcends most planning, anyway.
4:46: Repeating the assessment of state engineers in 1980 that the bridge was in danger of full collapse is not a conspiracy theory. I haven't seen the success of our democracy and nation-building campaign yet. Was it Vietnam? Korea? Iraq? Afghanistan? Yugoslavia? Somalia? Syria? I see imperialism and war profiteering, but no military or diplomatic success.
This is your blog, so I beg your pardon, but repeating an assessment from 44 years ago wasn’t the conspiracy part. It was the implication that anyone or group of government entities would rather spend money on imperialism and war profiteering than safety. (Which you confirmed was your thought in the above.) That is a conspiracy: for a group to devise a system or make decisions to do something harmful.
Yours is a false and libelous assumption of decision flow and implies nefarious or at least negligent intent at an institutional level, i.e. a conspiracy to ignore what is a ‘must’. As a technical person myself that has made recommendations on building and infrastructure improvements, I am humble (?) enough to know that there is more to the story than my myopic view on nuts and bolts. Yes, if I say, your bridge is going to fall down tomorrow without any doubt, then that gets attention. If I say, you probably should do some recommendation because someday absolutely every star that could aign to make something bad happen (see 5:08pm, which is well written), then other factors need to be considered. Everything in life is a risk-benefit analysis.
I will also agree to disagree with your black and white thinking about the wars and conflicts you list. Agree, one was absolute warmongering: Iraq, perpetrated by a Republican president who lied to the American people about weapons of mass destruction. I voted for him, by the way and unfortunately.
Agree, most if not all of the actions you list were not executed well. Too long to go into examples, but I would say we’re in good company in the world on that measure, war is messy and no one does it well. I would suggest we alllllll stop doing it.
But until then, I disagree that our action wasn’t successful ultimately. In most our action was necessary to limit communism, limit terrorism, limit invasion (notice you don’t mention Ukraine, where the GOP was giving standing ovations to Zelensky, but now are abandoning him and democracy in that country), limit dictators and authoritarians, limit bad things in short.
South Korea exists, doesn’t it. Vietnam adopted western friendly policies, didn’t it. Somalia has a federal government rather than being led by warlords, doesn’t it. Syria is still very much in play, but do you suggest we abandon it to Putin and Iran? Our involvement, though not perfect, did something.
It seems you are towing the new GOP line of isolationism, which wasn’t part of the platform when I was a Republican, and has NEVER worked. My great-grandfather fought in World War I for democracy, my grandfather fought in World War II against fascists and for democracy, my father fought in Korea against communist expansion. I only have to debate you, and for that I am grateful.
p,s, Afghanistan was relatively peaceful for the latter fifteen of the twenty years we were there, until the Fat Orange man made a horrible deal that Biden had to execute, and did so poorly. We were there because of a day in September, and we should have been. We stayed because we kept trying to get them to run themselves in a way that wouldn't once again threaten us eventually. No, it didn't work out well. But the Taliban ain't Al Qaeda, so I suppose that's something.
Yugoslavia is also peaceful today.
Imperialism and war profiteering may be a thing in some people's hearts, but the actions the US has taken has not been that at a policy level. We've not been isolationist until the whole world is against us and at our door. (see WW II)
p.p.s. My father was a Marine in Korea. He's passed now, but if he heard you say it wasn't a "success" that would be a significant problem in need of immediate correction. LOL!
Shout out to all the Marines. Oo-rah and Semper Fi on behalf of my dad.
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