Buying the Bridge

The oldest put-down in New York always revolves around buying the Brooklyn Bridge. The tag line is always something like, “If you’re that dumb I’ve got a bridge to sell ya.” There are a lot of variations on that theme and President Biden invented another one this week.

Waking up to the collision of the container ship MV Dali with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, Biden had two reactions. As the (very) old liberal he is, he automatically wanted to throw money at the problem, so he promised to pay for replacing the bridge even before he declared that Easter Sunday was “transgender visibility day.” We’ll get back to federal funding in a minute.

Biden’s second comment was that he remembered traveling over that same bridge many times by train. The problem with that, of course, is that the Key Bridge never had railroad tracks on it.

Now the wokesters are saying that the new bridge shouldn’t be named after Key, the composer of our national anthem. He evidently owned slaves, so the bridge — when its eventually rebuilt — will be renamed. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Dark Irony at the UN)

Thanks to videos taken of the ship’s collision with the bridge and the bridge’s immediate collapse and what the National Transportation Safety Board has told us, we have a good but incomplete picture of what happened.

One report — not from the NTSB — says that the ship suffered a power failure before it left the dock. If it had, and didn’t remain docked until the problem was diagnosed and repaired, someone was significantly negligent.

According to the NTSB the Dali left the port at about 12:39 am, going slowly, as ships always do in harbors. At 1:24 am, alarms started going off, indicating a big problem. At 1:27 am, the harbor pilots — again according to the NTSB — ordered the crew to drop the anchor. They must have been in contact with police and shore parties by that time. Two minutes later, the ship collided with the bridge at about 8 mph.

If you’ve seen the videos of the ship colliding with the bridge you saw that the Dali seemed to blow a large amount of smoke which could be the crew and pilots trying to reverse the engines at emergency speed to attempt to slow the ship and prevent the collision. Then the ship apparently takes a sharp turn to starboard (right) and goes into the bridge pier and the bridge collapses very quickly.

The Dali — which displaces over 95,000 tons (empty) and is about 300 meters long — is roughly the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. It holds about ten thousand containers which increase the weight. (Shipping containers such as these are what you see on the back of heavy 18-wheelers going down the highway.) Some of the Dali’s containers reportedly have hazardous materials in them such as lithium-ion batteries. None of the hazardous materials have reportedly leaked so far.

Given the physics — momentum equals mass (roughly what something weighs) multiplied by velocity — it’s no wonder that the ship quickly demolished one of the bridge’s main piers and resulted in the bridge’s collapse.

Police reportedly had about ninety seconds to stop traffic over the bridge before the collision. They somehow managed to do so. At least six people were killed — workers on the bridge — in the accident. Not all of the bodies have been recovered yet because their recovery is blocked by the wreckage and conditions are adverse to divers’ access. Had the police not stopped traffic, had the collision occurred when traffic across the bridge was heavier, the death toll would have been much higher.

According to the NTSB, the Key Bridge was “fracture critical,” which means that any damage to its principal piers could cause collapse. Again, according to the NTSB, eight other bridges in the U.S. are rated the same way, including the Verrazano Narrows bridge in New York City. All eight are critical commerce arteries in California, Maryland, Oregon, New York, and Washington.

Remember Obama’s economic stimulus plan which he said was meant for “shovel-ready” projects? None of that money was spent on strengthening those bridges.

So let’s get back to what Biden said.

Rebuilding the bridge isn’t the Feds’ problem. The cost of replacing it may yet be borne by the government, but it shouldn’t be. It’s up to the ship’s insurers and others who may be held liable for the damages to pay for it. Nevertheless, it probably can’t be rebuilt without federal funds, given Maryland’s — and the country’s — sinking economy. The litigation will go on for years.

The Feds’ real problem is clearing the harbor and making trade flow again.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the ship and the bridge wreckage are blocking any ships from going into or coming out of Baltimore harbor.

Baltimore is one of the busiest ports on the East Coast. Twenty-eight percent of our coal exports went through it last year. Hundreds of thousands of cars are imported through Baltimore every year. According to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, 52 million tons of foreign cargo worth about $80 billion came in through Baltimore. (READ MORE: Biden’s Strange Story Collapses in Bridge Collapse Presser)

The bridge’s wreckage certainly weighs more than one million pounds. Some of it lies across the ship’s bow.

The Navy has moved massive cranes to help clear the harbor. They include the “Chesapeake,” which reportedly can lift two thousand tons — two million pounds — is on scene along with four other Navy cranes.

The bridge parts will have to be cut or blown apart to enable the cranes to begin to clear the ship and remains of the bridge from the harbor.  The process is likely to take at least weeks or months.

Main sections of the I-685 Baltimore Beltway will be closed until the bridge is rebuilt at a cost that will be in the billions of dollars. It will take years to accomplish. Maybe then an ex-president Biden can ride across it on a train.

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