2024-04-03T20:42:22+00:00
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/ The American authorities warned against repeating the Baltimore Bridge incident again, as there are at least 7 bridges in the United States of a similar size and extent to the collapsed “Francis Scott Key” Bridge, making them vulnerable to a similar future tragedy.
The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHA) 2023 National Bridge Inventory identified seven popular bridges with “fracture-critical parts,” meaning damage to just one steel component could cause the entire structure to collapse.
Among the names on the list are the Golden Gate in San Francisco and Verrazano in New York, as well as the lesser-known St. John’s Bridge in Oregon, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”.
Even more worrying is that all seven of these bridges are supported by concrete towers or piers, vulnerable to the impact of cargo ships.
But to build bridge piers strong enough to withstand a hit from a container ship like this, you’d end up building a castle in the middle of the river.
The more than 4-mile-long Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which is located like the Baltimore Bridge in Maryland, is currently being planned for a multi-billion-dollar expansion.
The Chesapeake River witnesses the crossing of about 72,000 vehicles daily, according to 2016 census data, and large container ships also pass under it.
Most of the bridges at risk are located in the Pacific Northwest, including the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington and the St. Johns Bridge in Oregon; The Lewis and Clark Bridge connects Oregon to Washington.
These bridges are also major traffic arteries that see tens of thousands of vehicles pass daily, more than 90,000 vehicles in Tacoma Narrows, more than 22,000 vehicles in St. John’s, and about 21.5,000 vehicles traveling through Lewis and Clark.
A short distance south in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are two other routes, including the famous Golden Gate Bridge.
One of them, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, is responsible for supporting up to 280,000 to 300,000 passenger vehicles daily, or more than 13,000 cars during rush hour traffic.
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was first completed during the Great Depression in November 1936, and has already survived a collision with a container ship in 2007.
But this bridge, despite its age, had bumpers to absorb strikes.
Likewise, the Golden Gate Bridge has also been fortified with “the strongest security system of any bridge on the West Coast,” a spokesman for the government agency announced last month.
The Golden Gate helped an average of 89,000 vehicles cross the strait between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf, and up to 10,000 cyclists daily in 2023.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City was the seventh of the large at-risk bridges identified.
The structure, which connects the boroughs of Brooklyn to Staten Island, averages about 200,000 vehicles per day, according to the Parks Department.