Key Bridge investigation: Maryland Transportation Authority says collapse 'sole fault' of ship owners following NTSB report

Dan Belson, The Baltimore Sun on Mar 21, 2025

Published in News & Features

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BALTIMORE — Hours after a critical report from the National Transportation Safety Board, state officials said the blame for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse was solely on the owner of the freighter that crashed into the span.

But the Maryland Transportation Authority did not push back on the crux of the NTSB’s findings: The state agency did not conduct an industry-standard risk computation that would have found the chances of a vessel strike causing the Key Bridge to collapse were 30 times the acceptable level.

The agency said in their midnight response that they had been conducting an evaluation of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and would provide an update to the NTSB within 30 days. NTSB officials had included the bridge’s east and west spans as two of the dozens of U.S. water crossings identified in their Thursday report as bridges with an “unknown level of risk” if struck by a vessel.

They had said that Maryland transportation officials also did not have calculations, under American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials standards set in 1991 for vessel strikes, for the Bay Bridge.

Cecil County’s Chesapeake City Bridge, which is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, was also on the list.

Asked l ast year about evaluations for ship strikes, officials said Maryland did not run those calculations in already-built bridges regularly. New bridges would be subject to evaluations set by the AASHTO standards, but the Key Bridge and Bay Bridge — respectively built in the 1970s and the early 1950s — both pre-date the specifications put in place in the 1990s.

“Over the past 50 years, hundreds of vessels transited under the Key Bridge without incident,” the MDTA said in its response. “The Key Bridge, like other bridges in America, was approved and permitted by the federal government and in compliance with those permits.”

The MDTA had conducted some studies that weighed vessel strikes after the 9/11 attacks, but those vulnerability assessments were largely focused on the prospect of a terrorist attack. Terrorism was quickly ruled out by federal officials on the day the Key Bridge collapsed nearly one year ago.

The MDTA’s statements about the Dali’s owner come as the state and other government officials pursue millions in damages from Synergy Marine Corporation and Grace Ocean. They said in their response that the bridge collapse was due to the “gross negligence” of the ship’s owners and operators, who “put profits over safety.”

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