This is terrible. I woke up to a text saying the bridge was closed indefinitely only to find a ******* container ship knocked it over.
All that space between pillars and it runs smack into one. Can't imagine the cost and time needed to build an entirely new bridge.
Those container ships are hard to maneuver. My understanding is coming into port it’s tugboats that pilot the ships in. These pilots know the harbor better so it’s possibly there was a failure here. It’s going to talk a long time and a lot of money to rebuild the bridge but this is why infrastructure funding is almost always needed. To repair and replace aging and damaged infrastructure.
https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state/ Baltimore has crime and poverty, but it’s all relative. Baltimore City’s problem is that its property tax is too damn high and middle aged, middle class parents end up moving to the much more affluent surrounding suburbs.
From what I’m hearing in the news is that there is an experienced local pilot on board the ship when coming out or into harbor. an NTSB expert is saying just before the ship strikes the support there is a lot of smoke coming out of the smoke stacks so that indicates that a lot of power was being used. Possibly in response to an order for a hard turn. Again these ships are huge and can’t turn quickly.
I feel like that make the argument that Baltimore does indeed have a crime problem. I enjoyed my brief time there, but definitely not an area I'd want to live in.
From what time hearing this isn’t confirmed. It still will be time before we know for sure what happened.