MV Dali and the Patapsco River Bridge: What a Difficult Tragic Event? David Knight, an Engineer for the Maryland Port of Baltimore

Just shy of half past 1 in the morning, the MV Dali, a giant container ship, was sailing gently out of the port of Baltimore when something went terribly wrong. Suddenly, lights all over the 300-meter-long vessel went out. They flicked on again a moment later, but the ship then began to veer to the right, toward one of the massive pylon-like supports on the Francis Scott Key truss bridge—a huge mass of steel and concrete that spans the Patapsco River.

The Port of Baltimore, which is a critical shipping hub, has suspended water traffic because of the wreck, according to the Maryland Port Administration. Baltimore is the ninth busiest port in the US for international trade, which will have an impact on the entire US and world economy for however long the bridge takes to fix.

David Knight, an adviser to the UK’s Institute of Civil Engineers, says it’s a dreadful tragedy and something you hope never to see. But commenting on footage of the bridge collapse, he says he is not surprised by the manner in which it crumpled.

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Fortunately for the logistics industry, there are some alternative routes both for ships coming into port and trucks crossing the river. Two tunnels traverse the Patapsco and could take some of the goods and people that once traveled across the Key Bridge, which was also part of Maryland Route 695. Nearby ports, including Norfolk in Virginia, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and Savannah in Georgia, should be able to accept many of the goods usually handled by Baltimore’s port.

But the shipping picture will get more complicated the longer the disaster takes to resolve. Changes to their routes and destinations can add a lot of time to a journey, as ships haul big, heavy goods in large quantities across oceans. If a ship is hauling a bunch of different cargoes for a bunch of different industries, a holdup along the way causes a lot of people to be screaming for their supplies.

The experts are saying that it will be fine, and that is what they are saying right now. “If this lasts a while, it’s not going to be fine. It’s going to impact prices.

The growth of boats is down to simple economics: The more goods you can cram onto a ship, the more you save on costs. Zal Phiroz is a supply chain analyst at UC San Diego. “This has been impacted to a great degree by Covid, and after Covid as well. The prices of cargo and containers shot up. Everything went through the roof.