: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: This report incorrectly says that the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland is 17.6 miles long and is the fourth-longest bridge in the United States. It is approximately 4.3 miles long.]
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Maryland failed to conduct crucial assessments of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which could have prevented its collapse last year.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
That's according to a new report by the National Transportation Safety Board on the collapse of the bridge following a collision with a cargo ship, and the board says there are other bridges at risk.
FADEL: Scott Maucione from member station WYPR joins me to talk about this. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT MAUCIONE, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So what could Maryland have done to better prepare itself for this kind of disaster?
MAUCIONE: Well, there's quite a few things that certain industry standards says they could have done. Those industry standards were started in the early 1990s, and Maryland just really didn't conduct the assessments that they were supposed to, in terms of what those industry standards set. That's according to the NTSB. They say that lack of oversight could have been a big factor in the collision. The NTSB also noted that it conducted its own survey and found the bridge was 30 times over that risk threshold that was set by those industry standards. And also, just as a reminder, a cargo ship named the Dali rammed into the Key Bridge this time last year in March, causing its collapse and also the death of six people.
FADEL: What sort of things do these assessments entail?
MAUCIONE: They look at things like vessel traffic, vessel transit speeds, loading characteristics, a lot of those sorts of attributes. And over the years, ships have gotten bigger and bigger, and the bridges have gotten older, which means they need to adapt by putting things up like dolphins, which are these sort of concrete barriers that keep ships from actually getting to the bridge and ramming into them. So these industry standards have asked these bridge owners to take these extra precautions to avoid collapse. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy noted how those changes in vessel sizes have really made the industry completely different and had bridges - really have to look at what they're doing in terms of that sort of thing.
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JENNIFER HOMENDY: These bridge owners need to be looking at recent vessel traffic. Things have changed over time. Vessels have gotten bigger, heavier. At one point in the 1950s, we had vessels that had just 800 containers on them. Now we're talking 24,000 containers.
FADEL: What about other bridges across the nation?
MAUCIONE: The NTSB noted that Maryland, specifically, hasn't conducted these assessments on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which spans 17.6 miles. It's the fourth-largest bridge in the United States, according to length. It also identified 68 other bridges across the country that weren't built to the needs and specifications of this company. NTSB is strongly urging those bridge owners right now to conduct assessments to report back to the NTSB with remediation plans. And those bridges, they span from California to Washington to New York. They're all over the United States. So this is going to be quite an undertaking for people who own bridges and for different states and departments of transportation.
FADEL: That's WYPR's Scott Maucione. Thank you, Scott.
MAUCIONE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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