In multiple locations on the eastbound span of the iconic Chesapeake Bay Bridge — the original of the structure’s two spans, which opened in 1952 — the “pier protection is deteriorated, detached, and missing,” according to the most recent official inspection of the bridge. The inspection, completed in June 2023, was obtained by The Baltimore Sun from the Maryland Transportation Authority last month following a Maryland Public Information Act request in March.

Some timber fenders — which provide a barrier of protection from watercraft along bridge supports — are in “poor condition” according to the report, and “steel and timber sheeting is missing” from some fenders, too.

“The Bay Bridge inspection reports highlight certain items that are consistent with the expected wear and tear for the facility over time,” the transportation authority said in a statement Thursday to The Sun.

“These findings are typical for structures of this age and type and are promptly repaired through MDTA’s routine maintenance and preservation work, which is performed daily. MDTA remains committed to ensuring the safety and integrity of its bridges and will continue to monitor and perform necessary upkeep to maintain their optimal condition.”

Whether or not fenders are weak, however, would not necessarily impact the risk of calamity to the Bay Bridge. Fendering provides little, if any, protection from large ships, but instead offers a cushion for sailboats, pleasure crafts and other small vessels, protecting those boats and offering a degree of fortification for the bridge piers themselves.

The 4.3-mile structure, which carries up to 90,000 vehicles per day during summer months, has no substantial pier protection built to prevent a large, errant ship from striking the thoroughfare.

Such a scenario remains unlikely, though. Last year alone, 3,225 ships over 150 meters (492 feet) sailed under the bridge, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins researchers, without incident and in previous decades dozens of thousands of ships have safely made the transit. But the demise of the Key Bridge, which was knocked down by the Dali cargo ship on March 26, killing six construction workers, blocking the shipping channel and prompting dozens of lawsuits, has focused efforts nationally and locally on preventing catastrophe.

This summer, the Maryland Transportation Authority said it was exploring efforts to boost the Bay Bridge with pier protection.  The initial budget for the project was $145 million and the expected timeline by 2027/2028 winter.

An authority spokesperson declined Thursday to provide an update regarding the status of that project and what specific pier protection measures it might include, saying “we are currently in the study and concept development phase.” Any project would be covered by the authority’s capital program.

The Bay Bridge, like other structures, is federally required to be inspected every two years and the eastbound span’s most recent inspection began in Aug. 2022 and concluded in June 2023, resulting in a 252-page report. (The newer, westbound span was inspected from Sept. 2022 to May 2023 and resulted in a 75-page report.)

“Independent, certified, and nationally experienced engineering firms inspect all MDTA bridges, tunnels, roadways, lighting, and signage annually. MDTA then issues work orders to address priority repairs and program projects to address preservation needs,” the authority said.

The inspections were completed using “snoopers” — vehicles designed to lower an inspector underneath a bridge’s deck — and a lift mounted on a barge to analyze elements of the superstructure. As part of the inspections, lanes of the bridge were closed, including some full bridge nighttime closures.

The vast majority of the areas studied on both spans were found to be in “satisfactory condition,” but the inspection noted some necessary improvements. For example, in addition to issues with fendering, some of the eastbound span’s pier caps — which connect the superstructure to the piers — had cracks in them, and removing “pigeon debris” from portions of the bridge was listed as another defect to be addressed.

Separate from the inspection, the transportation authority has begun a $140 million project to replace the deck (the driving surface) of the eastbound span.

The newer of the Bay Bridge’s two spans opened more than 50 years ago, in 1973, before constructing bridges with vessel collision in mind was mandated by a national bridge code. The Key Bridge, which opened in 1977, also was not required to be fortified from the threat of a ship, but it still had a measure of protection in the form of four concrete “dolphins” — artificial islands filled with sand or water and designed to serve as bumpers. Those dolphins, however, ultimately proved insufficient; modern systems often utilize a dozen or more dolphins, which are several times larger in area.

Although fenders are not designed to prevent a large ship collision, they are still important, because they protect smaller crafts — which, if damaged, could present safety issues — and mitigate superficial damage to piers.

“There are plenty of smaller vessels in the Chesapeake,” said Rachel Sangree, a Johns Hopkins engineering professor who is part of a team studying the vulnerability of bridges nationwide. “Missing fenders likely present a greater threat to those smaller boats than to the piers themselves.”

The looming, more consequential question, though, is whether the Bay Bridge is adequately protected from a large vessel hitting it. In August, a 946-foot vessel named the Denebola experienced a steering issue as it neared the Bay Bridge, prompting a harbor pilot aboard to request traffic be stopped on the spans. The risk level was low and the ship transited under the bridge safely, but it, paired with the Key Bridge collapse, highlighted the potential danger of a ship hitting the bridge.

At least one of the Bay Bridge’s spans will ultimately — perhaps in the next 20 years — be replaced with a modern structure, one that will certainly meet the updated bridge code for pier protection. But in the meantime, the state is considering adding physical fortifications.

Michael Knott and Mike Winters, two experts on vessel collision, gave an engineering presentation in August sponsored by Florida International University entitled, “General Overview of Vessel Collision Risk Analyses.” Knott noted that any structure in a waterway is at some risk of ultimately being hit, whether in a minor or a major way.

“I often say if you build it, it will be hit,” said Knott, who was one of the principal authors of the vessel collision portion of the federal bridge code.

Vessel collisions were historically considered to be “acts of God,” Knott and Winters’ presentation said, but after two deadly collapses in 1980 — one in Tampa and one in Sweden — efforts began to build bridges to withstand or avoid ship strikes. By 1991, consideration for vessel collision was added to the U.S. bridge code (a nearly 2,000-page document).

Existing bridges, like the Bay Bridge, were not required to follow those guidelines and, thus, are more susceptible, compared to modern peers, to vessel collision.

When Baltimore Gas & Electric placed transmission towers carrying power lines across the Patapsco River in 2022, the base of the towers was protected with vessel collision protection rings — a degree of fortification that the Bay Bridge, as a product of the mid-20th century, does not have.

The best way to protect a bridge from ship strike is to consider that threat from the outset. With that in mind, a bridge could be built with a wide main span — placing piers far from the shipping channel — or with other protections in place. Retrofitting an existing span with pier protection measures can be expensive, and Knott said in his presentation that one dolphin can cost $10 million, meaning if you add 10 of them, which is not uncommon, the bill can be “$100 million without blinking an eye.”

“There are no cheap alternatives,” Knott said. “They’re all going to cost money.”

Despite clear economic consequences for Baltimore as a result of the collapse, a century-old maritime law precedent requires plaintiffs to have sustained direct, physical damage in order to financially recover. The bridge’s owner, the state of Maryland, obviously suffered damage. But without damage to a city-owned structure like the water main, Baltimore’s lawsuit might have trouble proceeding — which could explain the city’s evolving story regarding the pipeline.

In the days after the collapse, a city Department of Public Works spokesperson described the pipeline as having been inactive for several years. And when the city filed suit a few weeks later, it did not mention the water line at all. In May, a spokesperson told The Baltimore Sun that the department was “unaware of any damage” to the pipeline. But the person quickly revised the statement, saying there were no operational issues related to the closure of the pipe, which it said had been operating at a reduced capacity, and that an assessment would be completed later.

By Sept. 23, on the eve of the deadline to file claims against the Dali’s owner, the city amended its lawsuit with a fresh allegation: that the “Dali and its anchors caused significant damage to submerged pipes, including a 72-inch diameter water main owned and operated by the City of Baltimore, which supplies vital water to the City and its residents.”

Aside from the water main, the city has not specified what other pipes it is arguing were damaged. There is an active gas pipeline operated by Baltimore Gas & Electric in the area, but a BGE spokesperson told The Sun that it has not “identified any damage to the physical integrity of our electric and gas facilities.”

A city Department of Public Works spokesperson last month directed The Sun’s water main questions to the office of Mayor Brandon Scott. The mayor’s spokesperson, Bryan Doherty, did not initially reply to requests for comment, but after the original publication of this article said in a statement, in part: “DPW has expended significant resources investigating the impact of the incident, which has revealed damage that precludes returning the water main to active use before costly repairs are undertaken.”

Potential damage to the water main is one miniscule piece to the overall scope of the disaster. The collapse killed six construction workers on the bridge, blocked the shipping channel into Baltimore for months and is likely to result in tens of millions of extra vehicle hours on roadways as a result of traffic congestion before the span is rebuilt in 2028. A new bridge is expected cost roughly $1.7 billion.

But a Supreme Court precedent stemming from delayed repairs to a steamship in 1917 could make the water main essential to the city’s efforts to recover damages. The 1927 Robins Dry Dock Repair Co. v. Flint decision limits those who can recover damages in a maritime calamity to entities that suffered direct, physical damage. If not for the “bright line rule” provided by the case, liability could be endless, the logic goes, creating a slippery slope of never-ending claims from countless parties tangentially affected.

The Key Bridge’s owner, the state of Maryland, certainly suffered direct damage and, thus, Robins Dry Dock would not apply to its lawsuit, which alleged “reckless conduct” by the ship owner. A separate law could enable the federal government to seek damages for its efforts in clearing the shipping channel.

Baltimore, however, will have much tougher sledding, legal experts say.

The city has suffered extensively as a result of the collapse. One such example is the toll that commercial trucks and other vehicles are taking on city roadways as a result of rerouted traffic.

But economic consequences are exempted under the Robins Dry Dock rule, except for those that can be directly tied to physical damage as a result of the calamity. Baltimore city government passed a law over the summer seeking to fortify its legal footing, but maritime law experts are skeptical it will have real impact.

Damage to the water main would offer Baltimore a more plausible avenue to receive some payment from the ship owner, said Martin Davies, director of the Tulane University Law School’s Maritime Law Center, who called the amended complaint a “fairly obvious attempt” to get around the Robins Dry Dock rule.

Proving damage to the pipe would allow the city to recover economic loss that it suffered as a result of any damage to the pipe, but it would not, however, necessarily open the door for the city to recover all of the vast economic damages it has and will continue to suffer.

“It’s not like a peg you can then hang all of your economic losses on,” Davies said.

Dozens of parties — families of the six men who died, government entities, private businesses and others — have filed suit in federal court against Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Ptd. Ltd, the Dali’s owner and manager. But many of those cite economic consequences rather than physical damage, and are likely to be thrown out by the judge, legal experts say.

Damage to Baltimore’s pipeline could allow the city to “see another day,” said Pamela Palmer, a Los Angeles-based attorney with Clark Hill who focuses on transportation law.

“To be able to assert that you have that property damage is going to allow you to continue to have a place at the table,” she said.

How integral the pipeline was and the extent of any damage could be key in determining the value of a lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine said he had “no information” regarding the Dali’s potential damage to pipelines. In regard to the lawsuits, the Singaporean shipping companies have said they “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

The Baltimore City Department of Public Works initially said in a statement April 2 to The Sun that the city water main running parallel to the Key Bridge was “inactive” and had “not been used for water transmission for several years.” The pipe had serviced Anne Arundel County, which no longer receives water from the city, the department explained at the time.

“The main will not impact water service to residents, businesses, or hydrants,” the department said in April.

After the Dali was refloated, The Sun asked the department on May 20 if the water main suffered any damage. Initially, the department said in an email it was “unaware of any damage” to the water main, but then revised the statement minutes later, instead noting that the water main “was operating at a reduce usage since Anne Arundel County does not use City water,” but not commenting as to whether it suffered any damage. After follow-up questions, the department said the water main had been shut off the day of the collapse and that “there have been no operational issues related to the full closure of the 72-inch main.”

The city’s recent legal filing, though, stressed that the water main was “damaged by the combination of the Dali’s evasive maneuvers necessitated by its sudden loss of power, and the collapse of the Key Bridge.”

“After the allision damaged the water main in question, the City of Baltimore was forced to close the water main,” the argument states. “It remains closed, and recovery efforts around the remains of the Key Bridge have prevented the City from engaging in needed repairs to it, further exacerbating the damage caused by the Dali to the City of Baltimore.”

The shipping channel into Baltimore was closed for more than two months after the collapse, but was fully reopened in June.

The mayor’s spokesperson said Friday that the pipe “was operational and in use prior to the Key Bridge collapse, and has been shut down since then as a result.”

Throughout the channel cleanup and the refloating of the Dali, authorities had to be mindful of both the water main and BGE’s pipeline to avoid further damage to infrastructure. In a lawsuit filed last week, BGE stated that the Dali’s bow sat approximately 10 feet below the mudline and “critically, that a portion of the Pipeline was located directly beneath the Vessel.”

The ship or its anchor striking the gas pipeline could have created a separate disaster; in other instances, similar accidents have caused deadly explosions.

BGE’s attorneys said the ship and bridge came “perilously close” to damaging either the gas company’s underwater pipeline, or its electric transmission lines that run above the shipping channel. Taking the gas pipeline, 24 inches in diameter, and those transmission lines out of service to mitigate risk resulted in at least $2.5 million in damages, BGE’s lawsuit argues.

Like the bulk of the other lawsuits, Baltimore City’s does not specify the amount it seeks in damages.

Following stop-and-start-efforts in recent years to renovate the dilapidated racetrack, the state has now budgeted $400 million in bonds to fund a two-part project: Pimlico will be rebuilt using at least $250 million, and a horse racing training facility will be constructed elsewhere in the state using at least $110 million.

Clark was approved this week for a small percentage of that — it received a $900,000 contract from the state for pre-construction services — but the agreement places the company in line for the eventual building contracts, likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The company was awarded the contract over Whiting-Turner, whose fee for pre-construction services would have been $1.85 million, double that of Clark.

The Maryland Stadium Authority board first approved the contract Tuesday, then the Board of Public Works — the state spending board — OK’d it Wednesday.

BPW documents state that the stadium authority “intends to return with a recommendation to enter into a Guaranteed Maximum Price contract for construction services for the first of several bid packages if the performance of the preconstruction services is satisfactory and an acceptable price is negotiated.”

Ayers Saint Gross was selected in 2021 as the architect for the Pimlico rebuild, with assistance from Populous. Once a site for the training track is selected, the stadium authority is expected to select the same design team for that aspect of the project, too.

“There are many reasons why MSA would want the same design team for both the Pimlico project and the training center. As the tracks are essentially the same at both facilities, there is a reduction of risk from a horse safety aspect and cost savings from using the track design from the same consultant, to name a few,” said Stadium Authority Vice President for Capital Projects Gary McGuigan.

Construction at Pimlico is expected to begin immediately after the 2025 Preakness Stakes. The 2026 Preakness would then be held at Laurel Park in Anne Arundel County before the 2027 edition, if the timeline holds, takes place at a revamped Pimlico.

The country would soon wake to the news — that a wayward container ship, lacking power, had barreled straight into a support pier, felling within seconds a half-century-old structure essential to East Coast transportation and commerce. But as the darkened tide continuously rocked a vessel carrying thousands of steel containers and, now, a bridge span, the noise was the only hint of ruin.

“That banging, it’s what we kept hearing,” said Marcus Johnson, a Baltimore County assistant fire chief and one of the first responders present that morning.

Thursday marks the 6-month anniversary of the Key Bridge collapse after a 984-foot, 100,000-ton container ship named the Dali rammed into it, a tragedy that rattled Baltimore, killed six construction workers toiling through the night, and launched national efforts to study and better protect infrastructure. The effects are most felt locally, though, where residents can easily recall the flashbulb memory of where they were when they learned the news early that Tuesday morning.

“Feels like yesterday, feels like an eternity,” said Bruce Gartner, executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owned the bridge and is responsible for its rebuild.

In the immediate aftermath, crews set up shop on land as close as they could to the scene. For Baltimore County responders, that was the Dundalk side; for Baltimore City, it was near Fort Armistead. When Johnson arrived on-site around 2 a.m., about a half-hour after the collapse, he spotted the city responders’ emergency lights flashing about 1.5 miles away, across the Patapsco River. Realizing the two teams needed to unite their efforts, he got in his car.

“My first instinct was to drive across the bridge,” he said.

Every day before then, it would have been a quick, 3-minute drive. Instead, he became perhaps the first person in post-bridge Baltimore to drive all the way across the city to reach a location that the Key Bridge, now lost in the water, had once connected.

Two million lost hours

Traffic is not a tragedy. There is nothing inherently appalling about a drive taking 10 minutes longer than it should, nothing cataclysmic about being stuck behind a bevy of brake lights. And yet, it can be maddening, and can, ultimately, rob residents of their most precious commodity: time.

Six months after the collapse of the Key Bridge, traffic impacts remain — and they will continue for years. It’s one of the most far-reaching consequences of the disaster. The 30,000 vehicles that took the Key Bridge each day have all been rerouted and will not be able to use a rebuilt span until at least 2028.

Vehicles have spent over 2.6 million more hours on three particularly impacted Baltimore-area roadways — Interstate 95, Interstate 695 and Interstate 895 —  from April 1 to Sept. 21 of this year as compared with the same time frame last year, according to data from the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland.

The analysis is not definitive, cautioned the lab’s founder and director, Michael Pack, but, given that the data does not include delays on other, smaller roads, it’s likely a conservative estimate of the severe congestion impact.

Traffic engineers compute how costly delays are using estimates of the worth of time. For example, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute has set the national average hourly cost per passenger vehicle as $39.30 per hour and $64.68 per hour for commercial vehicles.

Those 2.6 million extra vehicle hours have resulted in a loss of time equating to at least $108 million, a figure that does not include the cost of fuel or environmental impacts of emissions. Over the course of four-and-a-half years — the amount of time between the collapse and the expected bridge rebuild — that number could exceed $1 billion.

In some cases — such as heading north on I-95 during the evening rush hour — average travel times have increased by 50%. And when traffic is bad, it’s really bad. Comparing the 95th percentile commutes (meaning especially lengthy travel times) shows a more than two-fold increase during morning rush hour on some roadways.

No magic pathway or temporary bridge is coming to mitigate the congestion. People might continue to adjust to a “new normal,” Pack said, but the traffic is expected to continue until the new bridge is ready.

It’s difficult to predict, Pack said, but added: “I doubt there would be a vast improvement.”

‘The best of us’

The morning of the collapse, video of the bridge collapse circulated immediately. By 4 a.m., it had made its way to Honduras, to Martin Suazo Sandoval, whose youngest brother, Maynor, had been fixing potholes on the bridge.

Martin got out of bed, summoned his nephew and resolved to travel across Honduras to the town where his mother, Rosa Emerita Sandoval Paz, lives. They wanted to give her as much information as possible without harming her fragile health.

She had a strange feeling when they arrived, Martin recalled, and when, accompanied by a doctor, they finally told her the circumstances, she immediately fainted.

That night, the six construction workers still in the Patapsco River were assumed to be dead by authorities, but the Suazo Sandoval family held onto a sliver of hope.

“We knew that my brother could swim, and we had great hope,” Martin said in Spanish. “You believe in God and had a great hope that he was alive.”

For almost two agonizing weeks, Martin and his family in Honduras anxiously awaited updates from another brother, Carlos, who lives in Baltimore. Martin said videos posted on social media falsely saying that his brother had been found alive “played with our feelings, played with our family’s dignity.”

Then, Maynor’s body was found.

“It was even harder when they told us Maynor had been found dead,” Martin said.

Lost was the little brother who supported his siblings and his parents. Lost was the perpetual dreamer. The generous man who worked hard jobs in America — like repairing roadways at 1 a.m. — to send money back to Honduras to support youth sports, the terminally ill, the handicapped.

He was the Suazo Sandoval family’s “fundamental pillar.”

“He left himself with nothing to support others,” Martin said. “He was the best of us in the family.”

Maynor called his mother each day, without fail. The afternoon before the collapse, he told her that he loved her, that he had to hang up to go to work and that he would call her the next day.

“The next day, I awaited a call,” his mother, Sandoval Paz, recalled in Spanish.

Attorneys representing the estates or families of the six victims — Maynor, Miguel Angel Luna, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, Carlos Daniel Hernandez Estrella and Jose Mynor Lopez — have filed lawsuits against the Dali’s owner. Among the legal jargon in the claims is a brief, personal description of each immigrant who sought in Baltimore a better life.

Those few sentences fail to fully encompass the men. And any dollar amount will fail to make up for their loss, Martin said.

“None of this will stop our pain,” he said.

Years of litigation

The bodies of the six victims have been found, tons of debris have been removed from the Patapsco River, and the Dali cargo ship is on its way to China for repairs.

The lengthy Key Bridge fallout, however, will carry on in courtrooms and litigation that could take several years. Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Ptd. Ltd., the Dali’s Singaporean owner and manager, have turned to a 19th-century law in an effort to limit their liability in the disaster to $44 million — a drop in the bucket of the billions of economic loss from the event.

More than two dozen lawsuits, however, counter those efforts. None are more explosive than the U.S. Department of Justice’s assertions that cheap, shoddy quick fixes precipitated the disaster. And none are likely to seek as much in damages as a claim by the state of Maryland, the owner of the bridge.

In a news conference Tuesday, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown vowed that the state would move quickly in asking a federal judge for a trial date.

“It is our goal to break through this limitation of liability — that they, so quickly after their gross negligence and reckless conduct, ran to the courthouse steps to limit their liability, based on a law passed 150 years ago when you had wooden ships and crowded ports,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Port of Baltimore continues to rebound economically. The shipping channel, blocked by the bridge that once spanned it, was closed for months, forcing vessels to unload at other ports. Some fretted that lost business would never return to Baltimore, but in recent months, the port has begun to bounce back.

The public port terminals are currently handling roughly 60% of the cargo as they did at this point last year, but are receiving about 90% of the ships, Maryland Point Administration spokesperson Richard Scher said. That discrepancy means that ships are unloading less cargo than usual — which could be a vestige of the shipping channel being closed.

This week has been a busy one, though, as 19 container ships are expected at the Seagirt Marine Terminal — a figure that approaches the pre-collapse norm.

After the sun rose on March 26, Johnson, the fire chief, took a silent moment, standing next to a couple of federal officials, to digest the scene in front of him. He took a moment to think on the collapse shortly afterward, when a flight he was on happened to provide a bird’s eye view of the bridge’s “blank space.” And as he later analyzed the wreckage from a police boat, he took another pause to process the loss.

Reflecting recently, he stressed how bizarre it still is to see the disconnected bridge, and his realization of just how often he drove over the span. But his reflections mostly lie with the victims.

Port workers were impacted. Commuters continue to face traffic delays. But, for the families of six construction workers, they will forever be searching for what was lost.

“They left for work,” Johnson said. “You expect your family to come home from work.”

The Bay Bridge and Key Bridge ranked 6th and 7th, respectively, for bridges with the highest traffic for “mega” ships, which are over 300 meters or roughly the size of the 984-foot Dali. Both bridges averaged nearly one of these ships a day over a roughly six-year period.

The data released on Monday, just a few days before the six-month anniversary of the Key Bridge collapse, is the first from a multi-phase study by Johns Hopkins University researchers into the likelihood of a bridge strike like the Dali’s collision with the Key Bridge. The data is integral as the team continues to explore its hypothesis, formed after the Key Bridge collapse: that the probability of the March 26 disaster, as well as future collisions, is underestimated.

The project was funded by a $200,000 Rapid Response Research grant from the National Science Foundation in May for researchers to begin an “urgent assessment of the country’s bridges, particularly the larger ones near major ports of entry.”

The data published by the Hopkins researchers, which comes from the U.S. Coast Guard, shows that large ships made 754,000 transits under 239 bridges in the U.S. from January 2018 to March 2024. These spans were chosen out of more than 623,000 in the National Bridge Inventory based on bridges near major ports. The analysis was limited to bridges that vessels longer than 150 meters passed under.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York led the list of 300+ meter ship traffic with an average of 4.6 vessels passing through daily in recent years.

A small fraction of the bridges studied make up the majority of the traffic, the data shows. There are 18 bridges  — around 7.5% — with at least one 300+ meter ship passing under per week, and they make up around 95% of all large ship traffic in the data. Over 56% of traffic can be attributed to just four bridges.

For all large ships above 150 meters, or 492 feet, the Key Bridge and Bay Bridge, respectively, ranked 13th and 14th in the U.S. averaging 8.6 and 8.3 ships a day for the period. (The vast majority of ships into the Port of Baltimore pass underneath both spans, but some vessels transit the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which resulted in them passing under the Key Bridge, but not the Bay Bridge.)

Annual ship traffic data released by the researchers also provides an outlook into how ship traffic for the bridges has changed in recent years. With six full years of traffic to report, the Bay Bridge peaked in 2023, the last full year of data, for all large ships over 150 meters at 3,225 ships passing through — a 14.5% increase from 2019. This shows recovery following declines in ship traffic during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Key Bridge also saw a 9% increase in 2023 from pre-pandemic traffic.

The researchers hope to, in their next phase, analyze data dating back to 2009.

The new data is one piece in the formula for addressing the research team's hypothesis, said Michael Shields, the Hopkins engineer leading the team. Calculating the risk presented to bridges can be summarized by combining three primary criteria.

“The main three things we’re looking at are ship traffic, the base aberrancy rate, and then, given that a ship aberrates, what are the odds it hits a pier?” he said.

Aberrancy includes instances where ships veer off course and includes loss of steering or propulsion, like the vessel that had a steering issue near the Bay Bridge in August, prompting a temporary closure of the span. The researchers will also seek to customize aberrancy rates for certain ports, Shields said. For example, some ports have stronger currents or more stringent protocols such as requiring tugboats to escort ships.

“The team’s findings will be crucial in reassessing and potentially redefining the safety standards for transportation infrastructure,” Hopkins engineer Ben Schafer said in a statement earlier this year.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), a national organization with members from each state, creates the nation's lengthy (nearly 2,000 pages) specifications for bridge design. When old structures like the Key Bridge and the Bay Bridge were constructed, that bridge code did not contain any ship-strike guidelines; it wasn't until the 1990s that AASHTO developed requirements regarding vessel collision.

Bridges today are required to meet certain risk thresholds for ship strikes. Probabilistically speaking, a critical bridge (such as ones that lead into a major port, for example) can have no larger than a 1 in 10,000 chance of collapsing from a vessel collision in any given year. However, the figures used to compute that probability are estimated, Shields said, and the Hopkins research could provide accurate data for engineers to use going forward. There has never been a national survey specifying how often large ships pass under various bridges, he said.

Plus, the Hopkins research could, depending upon its findings, prompt change by AASHTO. The organization meets annually to discuss potential changes to the bridge code.

The research team of three Hopkins professors, four Hopkins undergraduate students, two doctoral students and one Morgan State University student expects to publish more findings in 2025.

The state, which owns the fallen bridge, sued Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd, the Singaporean owner and operator of the ship, respectively, on the final day that claims were permitted to be filed. The state’s claim, like many before it, counters the Dali owners’ attempt to limit their liability in the disaster to $44 million — a fraction of the economic damage caused by the collapse.

The 984-foot, 100,000-ton Dali lost power March 26, striking one of the Key Bridge’s integral supports and knocking down its main span. Vehicle traffic was stopped ahead of the catastrophe, almost certainly preventing deaths to drivers, but six construction workers — who were already on the bridge, filling potholes — were killed in the tragedy.

Vessel traffic into Baltimore was stalled for months as crews worked to clear wreckage from the Patapsco River, and the city will continue to feel the effects of traffic on its roads until the new bridge, which is expected to cost $1.7 billion, is constructed. Its anticipated opening is October 2028.

The state’s filing says it seeks to hold the Dali’s owner and operator “accountable for their reckless conduct, negligence, mismanagement, and incompetency.”

How much the state is seeking from the Dali’s owner has not been quantified, Attorney General Anthony Brown said Tuesday during a news conference at his office, flanked by Gov. Wes Moore and other state officials. But its filing lists a medley of damages resulting from the calamity: part of the cleanup, the huge price tag of the new bridge, lost toll revenues while the bridge is down, environmental damage to state waters, increased “wear and tear” on local roads, among others.

In response to the state’s filing — and other recent lawsuits — a spokesperson for the Dali’s owner and manager said in a statement, in part, “We do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Brown said Maryland is seeking to expedite the legal timeline and hopes to soon set up a court schedule and select a trial date.

“We are not interested in delay in this matter,” Brown said. “We are interested in getting to trial sooner rather than later.”

The vast majority of civil litigation gets resolved before actually going to trial, but rarely do the cases involve stakes this large. Damages are expected to number in the billions of dollars, raising potential concerns that the Singaporean companies, if found liable, will not have enough money to pay out all the damages.

“Grace Ocean is a global shipping company and Synergy [Marine] is a global operator and manager of fleets,” Brown said in response to the possibility that the companies might not be able to pay potential damages.

In some ways, the state’s claim mirrors the Department of Justice’s explosive and detailed filing last week. It, too, includes photographs of what it says are makeshift efforts undertaken by crew members to limit vibrations to the transformer, an integral part of the ship’s electrical system. (Vibration problems are a “well-known cause of transformer and electrical failure,” according to the DOJ.)

“The vibration was so severe,” the state’s filing says, “that the crew was forced to improvise remedies in an unsuccessful effort to curb damage to the ship’s electrical transformers and switchboards.”

The state’s lawsuit includes a litany of alleged problems caused by the ship’s owner, from the shoddy fixes to the transformer to the crew not disclosing previous power outages and “falsely” assuring local Maryland pilots that “everything was in good working order,” before the doomed voyage on March 26.

“The ship became a dark missile, gliding through the port until it struck a pier of the Key Bridge with catastrophic force,” Brown said Tuesday.

In the months since the collapse, small businesses, the families of the victims, and government entities — ranging from the City of Baltimore to a Tuesday filing by Baltimore County to the U.S. Department of Justice — have filed a barrage of federal lawsuits.

A local publishing company filed a proposed class action lawsuit early on, arguing that its revenue suffered because local enterprises were not buying advertisements. A local propane distributor argued last month that the bridge collapse has required its drivers to take longer routes, costing them business and that an “example should be made” of the Dali’s owner.

And just Monday, Fornazor International, a New Jersey commodities and feed ingredients exporter that said it had 24 containers of soy product on the Dali, sought more than $120,000 from the ship’s owner.

Also Monday, the city of Baltimore, one of the first to file suit back in April, amended its complaint. Crucially, it added that the “Dali and its anchors caused significant damage to submerged pipes, including a 72-inch diameter water main owned and operated by the City of Baltimore.” The city “was forced to close the water main,” the filing states.

The city’s Department of Public Works told The Baltimore Sun in April that the water main had been inactive and had “not been used for water transmission for several years” before the collapse. But in May, DPW told The Sun that the pipe actually had “operated at a reduced capacity, with minimal water flow,” prior to the disaster.

In maritime law, it is difficult, because of legal precedent, to seek damages unless a party has suffered physical property damage. The city did not own the bridge, for example, but arguing that the Dali damaged a water main — its property — could provide it stronger legal footing.

Tuesday was set to be the final day claimants can file suit against the Dali’s owner in this case, but a motion filed Monday sought to push that back for a certain group. Attorneys acting on “behalf of various cargo interests” asked for the deadline to be postponed to Jan. 24 for “parties with an interest in cargoes shipped aboard.”

They argue that many cargo owners do not yet know whether their property suffered damage.

The federal judge, James K. Bredar, partially granted the motion — while scolding the attorneys for waiting until the eleventh hour to ask for an extension.

Cargo owners knew of their “basic dilemma for months now,” Bredar wrote, and “could have moved for an extension, or at least alerted the Court that such a motion may be forthcoming, at any point in the last five-plus months.”

“Instead, in a staggering display of procrastination, [the parties requesting the delay] chose to sit on this knowledge for months and wait until literally the night before the deadline to ask for an extension,” he wrote.

He granted a brief extension to Oct. 2 and set a hearing for Oct. 1 to discuss the “grossly untimely” last-minute request.

As a ship approaching the Chesapeake Bay Bridge experienced a steering problem last month, audio recently obtained by The Baltimore Sun shows that its pilot urgently requested that the Maryland Transportation Authority halt vehicle traffic on the span to avoid the remote possibility of a tragedy similar to the one that killed six people on the Francis Scott Key Bridge this spring.

The 51-year-old, 946-foot naval vessel named the Denebola was having a problem with its steering pump just north of the Bay Bridge’s two spans — which carry about 80,000 vehicles per day — on the afternoon of Thursday, Aug. 1.

“I need to stop traffic on the Bay Bridge right now,” the pilot can be heard telling a Maryland Transportation Authority Police dispatcher, according to the audio released to The Sun on Thursday in response to a Maryland Public Information Act request. It offers an inside account of the rare bridge closure, which was spurred by the severity of a collision’s potential consequences.

After being quickly transferred to a different dispatcher, the pilot emphasized his request before saying he had to hang up.

“I’m having steering issues. I need traffic stopped on the Bay Bridge immediately,” said the pilot, Capt. John Kinlein.

The dispatcher then can be heard saying: “I have a ship on the phone, saying they’re heading straight toward the Bay Bridge. Traffic needs to be stopped now. Again, traffic needs to be stopped.”

The ship eventually sailed safely under the span. Still, the incident, which came just over four months after the Dali cargo ship decimated Baltimore’s Key Bridge, highlights the tiny, but ever-present risk that vessels present to infrastructure. It also, the pilot said in an interview, serves as evidence of ship-strike protocol working.

According to emails from transportation authority officials obtained through the Public Information Act request, the original call from dispatch came at 1:48 p.m. and traffic was held by transportation authority police at 1:49. The bridge was clear of cars at 1:56 and the ship sailed under the bridge at 1:58. Traffic was then released at 2:05. Later in the day, the traffic delay traveling eastbound was 7.5 miles, according to transportation authority emails.

Contractors had been working on the bridge at that time and “were evacuated prior to the ship passing through,” the correspondence states.

Just before the Key Bridge disaster on March 26, vehicle traffic was stopped, surely saving the lives of many drivers, but six construction workers fixing potholes remained on the span and were killed. In the aftermath, debris blocked the shipping channel into Baltimore for two months and both private and public entities — including the Department of Justice — have filed lawsuits against the owner of the cargo ship.

The dispatch audio from the temporary Bay Bridge closure includes another brief conversation between Kinlein and the dispatcher and, later, Kinlein informing the dispatcher that the ship had safely sailed under the bridge.

“We’re all clear of the Bay Bridge now and you can resume traffic,” Kinlein said, before saying he needed to “clear this line” to make other calls.

Oceangoing vessels make thousands of trips into and out of Baltimore each year, and although there was no damage done during the August incident, it serves as a reminder of the hard-to-imagine consequences of a ship potentially crashing into the Bay Bridge. The 4.3-mile bridge — which carries twice as many cars daily as the Key Bridge did before it was knocked down — is an integral artery connecting the bulk of Maryland to the Eastern Shore.

The incident also illustrates ship-strike protocol — the system by which licensed Maryland pilots communicate with the transportation authority and the Coast Guard during an emergency — at work.

“The protocol worked,” Kinlein, the pilot, told The Baltimore Sun on Thursday. “And, given the situation all over again, I would do exactly the same thing.”

The origin of Denebola’s steering problem that day likely stemmed from its recent lack of use. The old vessel — which was on its final voyage, heading to Beaumont, Texas, to be recycled — had long sat in Baltimore. Kinlein compared it to first using a furnace after the summertime or starting up an old car that’s been in “your garage for a year.”

The vessel reached a normal transit speed of roughly 14 knots as it sailed south through the Chesapeake Bay, but experienced a hydraulic leak in one of two redundant steering pumps. When that happened, crew members switched over to the backup pump, but an apparent error by a crew member during the switch caused there to be a possible problem with the steering. Kinlein never lost the ability to steer, but given the leak and the potential for a loss in steering, he asked for traffic to be stopped, knowing it would take several minutes to clear the bridge of vehicles. Kinlein, at the time, assessed the risk of a collision to be relatively low, he said.

Steamships like the Denebola — built in 1973 as a high-speed container ship for the shipping company Sea-Land but later converted for military use — “handle really poorly” at slow speeds, so slowing them down too much can have adverse effects, Kinlein said. The ship sailed around 9 knots as it headed under the bridge. Rather than try to “diagnose” the problem as the ship approached, Kinlein decided to “not to take any chances at all” and “troubleshoot” on the south side of the bridge, after a safe transit.

The ship then moored south of Annapolis and was inspected that evening by the Coast Guard and the American Bureau of Shipping, a maritime classification society, which cleared it to continue on its voyage. It arrived in Texas on Aug. 6.

The Bay Bridge is occasionally closed for scheduled reasons — such as when tugboats escorted the Dali underneath it this summer — but traffic is rarely, if ever, stopped due to emergency situations by a potential ship strike. Asked whether the Bay Bridge had previously been closed due to the threat of a vessel collision, the transportation authority said in a statement last month that it “has not uncovered any records indicating that Bay Bridge traffic was held temporarily due to the threat of a ship strike.”

It was the first time in Kinlein’s 12-year career as a pilot that he requested a bridge be closed. And “hopefully the only time,” he added.

The Bay Bridge’s spans opened in 1952 and 1973 and the structure, like the Key Bridge, was not built with robust pier protection systems, which fortify bridges and prevent potential vessel collisions. The transportation authority, however, is considering a $145 million pier protection project at the Bay Bridge in an effort to “decrease the risk of vessel impact.”

The Key Bridge collapse aside, a large vessel hitting a bridge in Maryland waters is incredibly rare. However, it was not unthinkable even before the collapse. In a December 2023 meeting of the Port of Baltimore Harbor Safety and Coordination Committee, Kinlein himself had brought up the possibility of revising protocol “used in the event of the loss of steering or propulsion of a ship approaching the Bay Bridge or Key Bridge, due to the unreliability of reaching someone in the current protocol.”

Then, in the next quarterly meeting of the committee — which is a joint industry-government advisory panel — Kinlein updated other stakeholders. The protocol had “been revised,” according to minutes from the March 13 meeting, held 13 days before the Key Bridge collapse.

Local expert pilots, licensed by the state, are required to be aboard any large ship sailing in Maryland waters. As of earlier this year, there were 69 state-licensed pilots.

Did the Key Bridge collapse affect Kinlein’s decision-making at all? Would he have requested that the Bay Bridge be closed if the Key Bridge disaster had never happened?

“That’s a good question. That’s a question I’ve asked myself. I really don’t know because the Key Bridge has changed, I think, everybody’s mindset locally,” he said. “It’s really hard to say.”

“It’s kind of like getting back into the pre-9/11 mindset. It’s kind of hard to remember how you felt before then.”

The civil claims, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Baltimore, target Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd, the owner and manager, respectively, of the 984-foot, 100,000-ton Dali container ship. Those companies, both based in Singapore, moved under a 19th-century federal law to limit their liability in the maritime catastrophe.

“Petitioners killed six people and severely injured two others when they recklessly crashed an unseaworthy cargo vessel into the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” the lawsuits said. “Six days after the disaster that they caused, before all of the bodies of those who were lost were even recovered, Petitioners invoked the jurisdiction of this Court, asserting that they owe nothing for the lives they destroyed.”

All of the men killed in the collapse were part of a crew for Brawner Builders Inc., of Hunt Valley, working a night shift fixing potholes on the bridge when the wayward ship struck. Julio Cervantes Suarez, who also worked for Brawner, survived the collapse by escaping from a sinking truck and clinging to a piece of concrete until he could be rescued.

“Cervantes suffered severe personal injuries, including but not limited to blunt impact injuries, head injuries, back injuries, leg injuries, arm injuries, hypothermia, ingestion of water, emotional distress, fear of impending death, and fear of drowning,” his lawsuit says.

Judson H. Lipowitz, an attorney for the mother of bridge victim Maynor Yasir Suazo Sandoval, said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun that the victims’ families filed the claims simultaneously to show “solidarity” in their grief.

“Ms. Sandoval Paz is incensed by the outrageous attempt of the Dali’s owner and manager to limit their liability for their heinous and wrongful acts that killed her son, Maynor,” Lipowitz said. “This tragedy was totally preventable. It should have never happened.”

Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, said in a statement the companies anticipated victims’ claims ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for filing suit.

“The owner and manager will have no further comment on the merits of any claim at this time, but we do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight,” Wilson said.

Calling the Singaporean companies’ legal actions “outrageous” and “heartless,” the attorneys separately representing the families offered an overview of their claims in a news release.

“We intend to document how each and every egregious issue that affected the Dali’s performance that night, which ultimately cost six hard-working individuals their lives and devastated the lives of their families and the two men who survived, were all well-known to the vessel’s owners, yet were never addressed,” the attorneys’ statement said.

The lawsuits are the latest in a string of them. The city of Baltimore, the U.S. Department of Justice, small businesses and others have filed claims against the ship’s Singaporean owner and manager.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department alleged in a lawsuit of its own that a series of irresponsible, makeshift fixes to the ship’s transformer — integral to the electrical system — had played a role in the ship’s power outage and, ultimately, the disaster.

The victims’ lawsuits reflected those accusations, which were based upon an investigation by the Justice Department. The Dali had a “well-recorded history of severe and dangerous vessel vibration issues, which directly affected its electrical system and rendered the vessel entirely unseaworthy,” attorneys for the victims wrote.

Workers used “haphazard methods” to limit vibrations to transformers, which were “crudely secured using steel braces, which themselves were damaged by vibration.” The lawsuits go on to reference the Justice Department’s complaint, calling an “ad-hoc” cargo chain “contraption” the “most glaringly” obvious dangerous condition.

“These defects were known to Petitioners before departure for Sri Lanka, but they departed anyway. Petitioners’ reckless decision to leave berth in the face of these dangerous deficiencies was motivated by profit,” the lawsuits stated.

The claims also say that the ship’s master “knowingly and falsely assured” the Maryland-licensed pilots that the ship was in good condition and should have requested the two tugboats, which assisted the vessel out of the harbor, to continue to assist the vessel “through the bridge’s main span.”

Friday’s claims also emphasized the human toll of the disaster, which also disrupted operations at the bustling Port of Baltimore, by providing personal details of each of the men lost.

Miguel Angel Luna and his wife, Maria del Carmen Castellon Quintana, had been together for 14 years and married for nearly seven. Luna, 49, left behind five children and several grandchildren.

The claim filed on behalf of Jose Mynor Lopez’s family described him as a doting son who sent money to his parents in his native Guatemala every two weeks over the 17 years he lived in America. When he wasn’t working, he liked to play cards and garden with his younger brother, who also lived in Baltimore and worked at Brawner Builders. Lopez was 37.

Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, also regularly sent money to his parents in Guatemala to support his mother’s medical care and so that the family could have a refrigerator and nice foods.

“At the age of 20, he came to the United States to work and earn money for his family,” the lawsuit said. “Dorlian was a happy person who enjoyed spending time with his friends and listening to Mexican music, but his life revolved around working hard and being there for his parents and family.”

Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Fuentes, 35, and his wife, Mariela, dreamed of giving their children something they didn’t have growing up: “a bright future, a father and mother, and a stable household,” the family’s attorneys wrote. “Mariela and Alejandro had achieved this dream for their family before it was destroyed.”

Attorneys for Sandoval’s family described him in their lawsuit as a loving husband, father and son. They said he achieved “the American Dream for him and his family, but never forgot where he came from,” regularly sending money to pay for doctor’s appointments, medicine and youth soccer leagues in his hometown in Honduras. He was 38.

“Maynor lived a life deeply rooted in faith, love, and service to others,” his family’s attorneys wrote.

Carlos Daniel Hernandez Estrella was a “very hard-working and above all very responsible, noble, and respectful man” and was “always attentive and respectful but also funny,” attorneys for his father and mother wrote.

“Now that her son is gone, there is a great wound in Lucia’s heart,” attorneys wrote on behalf of his mother, Lucia Estrella Zambrano.

No, for a moment, the Orioles were walk-off winners, and that’s what mattered to the announced crowd of 23,181 who had decided to spend their Thursday afternoon at Camden Yards, watching the faltering Orioles.

In the bottom of the ninth inning — as Orioles manager Brandon Hyde began to contemplate the 10th — Anthony Santander eliminated the need for any free baseball. He powered a two-strike, two-out home run just over the right-center field wall, giving the recently win-starved Orioles a 5-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants and sending the crowd into a long overdue frenzy.

Minutes before, Camden Yards sat deflated as the Orioles squandered a ninth-inning lead, yet another disappointment in a deluge of them. But, moments later, they had notched an elusive win, improving to 85-68 and, despite all the gloom that has surrounded their dismal performance in recent months, one game closer to the postseason. Their magic number to clinch a playoff berth is five.

“It was a breath of fresh air, for sure,” Orioles starting pitcher Zach Eflin said.

Thursday marked the Orioles’ seventh walk-off win this season, but their first in more than two months. It was their fourth walk-off home run of the year, but first since mid-May, back when the Orioles were flying high. As fans hung around Thursday, soaking in the magic, a puddle of water sat on home plate, a mark of the much-needed celebration as joyous Orioles poured water on Santander.

The Orioles blew a ninth-inning lead catastrophically, as a long fly ball had dropped between diving outfielders Austin Slater and Cedric Mullins, who needed medical attention afterward but remained in the game. That allowed the Giants to tie the game at 3 and send it to the bottom of the ninth.

There, after fouling off four straight pitches, Santander lifted a slider against Giants reliever Ryan Walker. At first, though, Santander wasn’t sure it was hit well enough, worrying it would be too high.

“Keep going, please,” were his thoughts, he said.

Jackson Holliday called it, however. The rookie predicted, to Ryan O’Hearn, that Santander was going to walk it off, Holliday shared with reporters after the game.

“I thought he was going to hit a slider for a homer and, I mean, it was pretty amazing that he did,” the second baseman said.

Hyde said he was hoping for a wind gust as the ball sailed. “I was yelling, ‘blow, blow, blow.’”

The Orioles got that gust and, they hope, a boost, too. Holliday called it “unbelievable” and Hyde used perhaps an even more apt word: “needed.”

Despite a three-game losing streak and a monthslong string of injuries and poor performances, Thursday started promising enough.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Giants had taken early leads thanks to leadoff home runs from former Oriole farmhand Mike Yastrzemski, but on Thursday, Eflin blanked the Giants in the first inning. The right-hander finished by allowing just two runs on six hits over six innings — yet another productive outing for the trade deadline acquisition.

Even an early Giants’ lead, which came on a two-run home run from Michael Conforto, was immediately eclipsed by an Orioles rally. Santander walked to open the bottom of the fourth, Colton Cowser singled, Adley Rutschman doubled and then, with two outs, Holliday drove in two runs with a single up the middle. The second baseman punctuated his productive day by ending the Giants’ half of the following inning with a leaping catch on a line drive, stealing a hit from Yastrzemski.

“Hopefully this gives him a little bit of confidence,” Hyde said of Holliday’s strong day.

After Eflin exited, Cionel Pérez and Yennier Cano pitched scoreless seventh and eighth innings, respectively, and both were aided by their outfielders, holding up their arms in gratitude each time. First, rookie Heston Kjerstad made an excellent catch at the warning track in right field to end the seventh. Later, Mullins made a diving grab in center field in the eighth.

The Orioles entered the top of the ninth inning with a one-run lead, but closer Seranthony Domínguez, seeking his 10th save in as many chances with Baltimore this season, gave up two walks and then the doomed long fly ball to right-center field, which Mullins and Slater could not track down. It made for a scary moment for Mullins, who stayed on his knees for a while before being checked by trainer Brian Ebel.

With runners on first and second and nobody out, Donovan Walton popped out behind home plate on a failed bunt attempt. Gregory Soto then entered in relief of Domínguez and got an inning-ending double-play ball from pinch-hitter Mark Canha on his first pitch, keeping the game tied and setting the stage for Santander’s blast, his 42nd of the season.

The Orioles have lost their mojo recently, struggling for much of the summer after a blistering spring. And Thursday’s win over a sub-.500 Giants team doesn’t necessarily rectify all of their troubles, but the Orioles were able to avoid a sweep as they head into their final home series of the season against the red-hot Detroit Tigers, beginning Friday.

Thursday morning, Cowser was asked about turning the page after a loss, which the Orioles have needed to do often of late.

“It’s just kind of like, onto the next one already,” he said. “You can’t sulk for too long, especially in this game. We play so many games.”

Time is running short for the Orioles to return to their early-season form, but on Thursday, at least for a moment, none of that mattered.

Around the horn

• The last three innings were played with a bat — which Giants pinch hitter Heliot Ramos accidentally let go of while following through on a swing — stuck in the netting next to the visiting dugout, hanging as a peculiar ornament.

• First baseman Ryan Mountcastle is expected to begin his rehabilitation assignment this weekend, Hyde said.

• Orioles left-handed reliever Danny Coulombe faced three hitters Wednesday for Triple-A Norfolk, which was planned, Hyde said, as the team decides what his next steps will be.

• In Jordan Westburg’s first rehab game for Norfolk on Thursday, he batted leadoff and played all nine innings at second base, going 1-for-4 with an RBI single. Ramón Urías, playing third, went 1-for-3 with a single.

• Corbin Burnes, Cade Povich and Albert Suarez will start for the Orioles this weekend against the Tigers. Burnes pitching Friday means he’ll be in line to face the Yankees for the first time this season when Baltimore visits New York next week.

• Mullins eclipsed 30 steals for the third time in his career and Gunnar Henderson reached the 20-steal mark for the first time in his.

Tigers at Orioles

Friday, 7:05 p.m.

Stream: Apple TV+

Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM

The civil claim against the Singaporean owner and manager of the Dali, Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd., seeks $103 million in damages stemming from federal cleanup and recovery efforts. It does not seek to recover the cost of rebuilding the span, which is owned by the state of Maryland. The state is expected to file its own claim later.

At the crux of much of the litigation surrounding the bridge collapse — which closed the Patapsco River shipping channel and most of the Port of Baltimore for months, continues to cause traffic problems and has caused incalculable economic consequences — is what caused the massive cargo vessel to twice lose power before it toppled the structure.

The Justice Department’s account, which is based upon its own investigation, points to existing issues with the ship’s transformer, which converts high-voltage power to lower voltage-power. The transformer had “long suffered the effects of heavy vibrations” and had been “retrofitted” with braces, one of which had “cracked over time, had been repaired with welds, and had cracked again,” the lawsuit says. The vibration was so “constant,” the suit alleges, that it caused “cargo lashings above the engineering spaces to work loose.”

A “metal cargo hook” also had been “wedged” between the transformer and a steel beam “in a makeshift attempt to limit vibration,” according to the suit.

The vibration problems — a “well-known cause of transformer and electrical failure” per the claim — had been noted previously by a ship’s officer and engineers, and a captain wrote in May 2023 that the vibrations had been reported to Synergy, the claim states.

Evidence that the owner and manager of the ship were aware of these problems before the collapse could be crucial, said Charles Simmons, a Baltimore attorney and maritime law professor.

Shortly after the bridge collapse, the ship’s owners sought to limit their liability to $44 million in an early April filing and, since then, several lawsuits — by the City of Baltimore, small businesses, etc. — have been filed against them.

The Justice Department’s claim, however, is the “most explosive filing, by far,” Simmons said.

If the government can prove that the owners had “privity or knowledge” of these issues, that could result in the owners’ liability being “unlimited,” Simmons said.

“What the DOJ is pointing out is that they were having lots of problems with that transformer and it should have been apparent,” Simmons said.

Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, said in a statement Wednesday that “the filing of today’s claim was anticipated.”

“The owner and manager will have no further comment on the merits of any claim at this time, but we do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight,” he said.

After problems arose with the transformer in the early hours of March 26, the backup transformer was then unable to assist, according to the Justice Department’s claim, because a safety feature had been “recklessly disabled.” Engineers “were left struggling in the dark to manually reset the tripped circuit breakers” for the transformer, while the 984-foot, 100,000-ton ship headed for the bridge’s support pier at 6.5 knots.

“This took them a full minute, wasting critical time to regain control of the ship,” the claim said.

Power was briefly restored, but the Dali experienced another power failure about 65 seconds later. As the culprit for the second blackout, the government’s claim points to the use of a “flushing” pump, rather than a “proper fuel pump” to fuel the diesel generators “that made the ship’s electricity.” The owner and manager used the flushing pump, the government’s suit alleges, because it was cheaper and more convenient.

“In short, using the flushing pump saved money,” the filing states.

The lawsuit goes on to say that, according to recent inspections, the ship had “loose bolts, nuts and washers and broken electrical cable ties” in the transformers and electrical switchboards.

“The ship’s electrical equipment was in such poor condition that an independent testing agency discontinued further electrical testing due to ‘safety concerns,'” the claim states.

The ship owner “sent an ill-prepared crew,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote, aboard the ship and patched up the vessel with temporary, makeshift fixes rather than actually making permanent, necessary repairs.

The Dali lost power twice the day before the tragedy, the National Transportation Safety Board — whose investigation into the incident is ongoing — previously found. Those outages were not reported to the Coast Guard as they should have been, per U.S. regulations, the suit alleges.

Local, Maryland-licensed pilots are required by state law to guide large ships while in Maryland waters. However, the pilot aboard the Dali at the time of the collapse was not informed by the captain of the crew (which consisted of 20 Indian members and one from Sri Lanka) of prior losses of power, nor of “other mechanical or electrical defects,” according to the suit.

In a last-ditch effort, the pilot sought to release the port anchor and, when that could not be done quickly, to apply the full power of the bow thruster. But the bow thruster was “inexplicably,” the suit states, not available and the “unseaworthy condition of the ship impeded” efforts to prevent the collision.

Justice Department attorneys went on to call the vessel owner’s conduct “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton, and reckless.”

The federal government also is seeking “punitive damages” to “deter such misconduct,” although it isn’t clear how much that could be. Generally speaking, the maximum awarded in punitive damages is no more than how much is awarded in compensatory damages. (So, in this case, punitive damages would be unlikely to exceed much more than $100 million).

“They cut corners in ways that risked lives and infrastructure,” the claim stated. “Those responsible for the vessel must be held fully accountable for the catastrophic harm they caused, and punitive damages should be imposed to deter such misconduct.”

The FBI opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the bridge collapse earlier this year, but on a call with reporters Wednesday morning, Justice Department officials declined to comment on the status of that investigation.

Rod Rosenstein, who previously served as the number two official at the Justice Department and as U.S. Attorney for Maryland, said the shipping companies face “very challenging issues” with the government proceeding both criminally and civilly against them.

“You need to coordinate your response because what you say in the civil suit could harm you in the criminal matter,” said Rosenstein, now a partner at King & Spalding in Washington.

Unlike in criminal court, for example, invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in a civil case can be used against you as suggesting guilt, he said.

Rosenstein said that while it’s infrequent, the government on occasion does undertake parallel civil and criminal cases over the same incident because the penalties in each serve different purposes.

“A civil suit is primarily about restitution,” he said. While criminal cases can also carry fines, they have other “collateral consequences,” such as preventing a company from gaining future government contracts, he said.

The bulk of the $103 million figure the federal government is seeking to recover came from $74 million in expenses incurred by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the cleanup and recovery process. The Coast Guard spent $22 million, the Department of Labor spent $3.5 million, the U.S. Navy spent $1.8 million, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent about $850,000 and the Maritime Administration spent $830,000.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is “working to ensure that the costs of clearing the channel and reopening the Port of Baltimore are borne by the companies that caused the crash, not by the American taxpayer.”

As the lawsuits pour in, the Maryland Transportation Authority continues to work toward building a replacement span. The authority, which owns the bridge, is working with construction giant Kiewit on the bridge design, which is expected to take about a year. In the coming months, the remnants of the Key Bridge will be blasted and demolished and, in 2028, a rebuilt bridge is scheduled to open.

The new span is expected to be at least 90% federally funded, but Democratic President Joe Biden has pledged that the federal government will cover the whole bill. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, echoed that sentiment again in a statement Wednesday.

“Today’s DOJ filing brings to light evidence of the negligence and mismanagement that we have long-suspected contributed to the Dali’s collision with the Key Bridge,” he said. “As we continue working in Congress to guarantee full federal funding for replacing the Bridge, we must hold those responsible for this tragedy accountable.”

Asked Wednesday morning at City Hall about the federal government’s suit, Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott said his “first thought” is with the families of those affected.

“Thinking about the people who lost their lives,” he said, “thinking about the communities impacted, thinking about how the city, how the state, how the nation was impacted.”

Baltimore Sun reporters Jean Marbella and Hannah Gaskill contributed to this article.