The impact of the Baltimore bridge disaster

Maryland’s governor declared a state of emergency. Six people are thought to have drowned. Beyond the human toll, the immediate questions concerned the causes and consequences of the disaster—one of the most significant in America for decades, according to Jerry Hajjar, president of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The FBI has said that terrorism was unlikely to have been behind it.

The 300-metre-long ship, the Dali, was heading from Baltimore to Colombo, in Sri Lanka, when it “lost propulsion”, according to an unclassified Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report. The crew reportedly notified officials that a bridge collision was likely. Eyewitnesses say the ship’s lights flickered just before impact. Locals heard a loud thunder-like rumble in the middle of the night. “The house started shaking,” says Cyrus Gilbert, a resident of Locust Point, directly across the harbour.

Investigators will want to know why the Dali lost control. Nada Sanders of Northeastern University, an expert on the global supply chain, says that the ship had an inspection issue last June. According to Equasis, a shipping database, Chilean authorities gave it a “deficiency” for propulsion and auxiliary machinery (though no deficiencies were recorded in a follow-up inspection in New York).