A bridge in the U.S. port of Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning after it was struck by a container ship, sending several vehicles plummeting into the river below. Maryland Governor Wes Moore has declared a state of emergency while rescue crews search the water under the Baltimore bridge for survivors. The port serves as a major hub for automakers, including GM, although General Motors does not expect a major disruption to its operations.
Photo credit: WBAL-TV
According to a report from The Guardian, ship tracking indicated a Singapore-flagged container ship at the location where the Baltimore bridge support column was struck. The accident occurred around 1:30 a.m. local time. The Baltimore bridge serves as a major route along the city ring road. Traffic has been suspended.
Rescuers are now searching for survivors. At least seven people are believed to be missing.
Photo credit: WBAL-TV
The Port of Baltimore is known for its deep harbor in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, and is strategically placed closer to the Midwest than other East Coast ports. The harbor includes five public terminals and 12 private terminals. According to Reuters, it’s one of the smallest container ports on the Northeastern seaboard, handling approximately 265,000 containers during the fourth quarter of the 2023 calendar year. By comparison, the Port of New York and New Jersey handled roughly 2 million containers during the same time period. That said, the port is the busiest U.S. port for auto shipments, with 750,000 vehicles handled last year.
At present, roughly 40 ships remain inside the port, including small cargo ships, tug boats, and pleasure craft. Tracking shows at least 30 additional ships signaling Baltimore as their destination.
Photo credit: WBAL-TV
In a statement, General Motors said it was unlikely the collapse would affect the automaker’s operations.
“Our thoughts are with those who were affected and the Baltimore community. We expect the situation to have minimal impact to our operations. We are working to re-route any vehicle shipments to other ports,” GM said.
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Comments
This is the site I came to to get away from the news 😡 GMA using any excuse for traffic.
You go to a news site to get away from the news?
Everything woke turns to sheeeit
Enough. This has NOTHING to do with that, go play on the OAN website…….
How the frack is a bridge “woke”? People died there, must we drag identity politics into this? Fracking idiots.
This is a major infrastructural disaster. Hopefully it will be only one to happen this year, although I have my doubts! All kinds of madness is potentially waiting to happen, watch and pray my friends!
How is it an infrastructure problem that they lost control of a ship due to a possible mechanical malfunction or human error? The ship isn’t part of the infrastructure, the bridge is and last time I watched the video, the bridge didn’t attack the ship.
And all of this could have potentially been avoided if someone thought to place properly sized dolphins or protective objects ahead of the main two bridge supports. Blaming blue or red is pointless as neither party obviously addressed this horrible tragedy before it happened. Instead of attacking each other why can’t they work together to help prevent this sort of thing from happening again as this is not the first time and use monies that are supposed to go into infrastructure for its intended purpose.
Yeah you would have thought a few extra bucks to protect the critical piers would have been considered money well spent. 1977 bridge so I guess it is to be expected that it was built down to a price.
They get so much shipping traffic that accidents like this were only a matter of time.
Fortunately the cops heard about the ship’s spastic propulsion and prevented any cars from going over it before the collapse.
The ship’s captain radioed the harbor master that they were having mechanical difficulties, the harbor master contacted the police. The ship’s captain deserves the credit for getting the police to close the bridge. Not all of the traffic was stopped, 6 cars went into the harbor. There’s nothing that could have stopped the ship from doing as much damage as it did. That much mass takes miles to stop when there is no power, even at that low speed. Without propulsion, the currents pushed it right into the bridge.
In addition to what you said, they had an electrically actuated rudder which didn’t work when the lights went out.. The puffs of solid black smoke obviously indicated problems with the fuel supply to the generator(s) and they had too much trouble getting reliable electricity out of it at a critical moment, which did not get out of the pier’s way in time.
All the alternative websites are blaming Russia (like everything that goes wrong these days), but I see it as just an accident that – seeing how busy the traffic is in that locale – should have been anticipated and as mentioned given pier protection on a so critical item.
That ship was bad luck to begin with. Previously it had already rammed another ship due to ‘navigation trouble’.
I was actually wondering about that when they reported that Baltimore is a major port of entry for cars since so much of the Buick and some of the Chevy lineup is imported.
Foreign, European vehicles coming in there
Yup, my Chevy Trailblazer sat in the Baltimore port for 4 weeks waiting for transport to south NJ. The dealership indicated the ship goes through the Panama Canal when traveling from South Korea.
Ya gotta wonder about the design of the bridge when one hit brings the whole thing down.