Now come the cleanup and the questions after an enormous bridge collapsed in Baltimore
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where JR and I help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. We tell a story about something in the news. You get to listen at the speed that’s right for you. And we give you the resources and exercises to help you get involved in the story. And we think that’s a great way to get better at English every week.
Today’s story—I’m not sure if this made international headlines or not, but this was a big deal in the U.S. An enormous bridge, carrying an interstate highway, fell into a river early in the morning on March 26. This happened after a container ship struck one of the piers supporting the bridge. Today, I’ll tell you what happened, and what comes next.
In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you how to use the English phrasal verb “fire up.”
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Now we’re ready to start today’s story.
Massive bridge falls after collision with ship
Early in the morning on March 26, the Dali, a container ship, left the Port of Baltimore. Baltimore is an industrial city in the state of Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C. The Dali is a new Panamax ship. That means it’s one of the biggest ships that can cross the Panama Canal, since the canal’s expansion last decade.
The Dali was headed for Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The journey was to take 27 days. There were 22 crew members on board, plus two pilots. Pilots are local workers who steer massive ships in and out of ports. They know the ports better than the ship captains do, so they take over steering when large ships enter and leave the ports.
As the Dali was navigating out of the port of Baltimore, the ship completely lost power. That means its engine, mechanicals, and lighting—they were all dead. It was the middle of the night; everything was pitch black. Without power, the crew could not steer the ship. And the Dali veered off course. In the darkness, amid the confusion, one thing was clear. The ship was on a collision course with a massive bridge—the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
This was a 2.6-kilometer-long bridge that opened in 1977. Francis Scott Key was a poet who wrote the lyrics to the American national anthem. The Key Bridge carried multiple lanes of highway traffic. And it was supported by several concrete columns fixed to the bed of the Patapsco River. The columns are called piers. And there was enough space between piers for large ships to pass.
But the Dali had lost its steering—and the ship was headed straight for one of those piers. The crew scrambled to avoid an accident. They dropped an anchor to slow the ship’s progress. They steered the rudder hard to one side. They worked to fire up an emergency generator on board. But nothing worked on time. A collision was inevitable.
Just minutes before impact, the crew sent an emergency mayday message to the port: the bridge was in danger. Miraculously, the state’s department of transportation was able to stop vehicle traffic on the bridge, so there were no cars and trucks passing overhead.
The rest you can watch on video .
The ship hit one of the bridge’s support columns at 1:28 a.m. It was traveling at eight knots, or about fifteen kilometers per hour. In a matter of seconds, the main span of the bridge fell into the water. A large steel section crashed onto the ship’s bow. The collapse took twenty seconds.
At the time of impact, a construction crew was working on the bridge, filling potholes. Eight men were on that crew. Two of them were rescued alive from the water. Two bodies were found inside a truck at the bottom of the river. The other four were presumed dead.
The ship was stuck in place for days afterward, trapped in between sections of the fallen bridge. Many of its 3,000 containers were mangled from the weight of the debris that fell on them. Others had been tossed into the water.
The bridge was left in pieces—just wreckage in the river. You could see entire sections sticking up diagonally above the water. But it was worse below the surface, where about 80 to 90 percent of material had come to rest. One coast guard official said it was a “tangled mess” of material down there.
Cleanup crews began to cut the bridge up into smaller pieces and haul each piece off, one by one. One of the biggest cranes in the world was brought in to help.
All operations at the port were suspended in the days after the closure. The following week, a narrow lane through the harbor was opened for commercially essential ships. The task force managing the cleanup hopes to gradually open wider lanes as the disaster area is cleared.
The bridge collapse will have a significant economic impact on Baltimore and the companies that operate there. The port of Baltimore is the ninth-busiest port in the United States. It is a big part of the regional economy. Almost all shipping had to be diverted to other ports in the region—to New York and New Jersey to the north; and to Virginia, Georgia, and Florida to the south.
Those ports have additional capacity and they can handle additional shipments while Baltimore is closed. But the problem is more complex than simply diverting ships. Containers are flexible; those can easily go to other ports. But Baltimore handles more cars and trucks than any other port in the United States. Those are harder to divert, since not every port can handle vehicle imports.
Baltimore also handles specialized raw materials. The biggest sugar refinery in the Western hemisphere is located right next to the port of Baltimore. Domino Sugar takes raw cane sugar off imported ships and refines it into various products, for consumption in the U.S. and elsewhere. Those operations will be significantly disrupted by the port’s closure.
And then there’s traffic. The bridge carried an interstate highway that formed part of the beltway, or highway loop, around Baltimore. About 30,000 vehicles crossed the bridge every day. They’ll now have to be rerouted through tunnels or other roads in the region. That will cost commuters, people going about their business , and, of course, shipping in the area. It will put more traffic on a nearby section of Interstate 95, already one of the most heavily traveled in the country.
I heard one reporter describe it this way. He said, Baltimore used to have a beltway loop around the city. Now, it just has a letter “C.”
Jeff’s take
This wasn’t a famous bridge. This wasn’t a landmark bridge. But it was big. It was big and famous in Baltimore. A big bridge over a river—this is one of those things that’s just part of the background of life. A bridge falling into the water? You just don’t think about that.
And then it happens—and you can watch it. There was security camera footage. This enormous bridge fell down in a matter of seconds, piece by piece. It was like watching the Twin Towers again. You don’t think something like this can happen…and then it happens and it only takes a few seconds.
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