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Paychecks will soon run out for thousands of workers who handle cargo on Baltimore’s docks, and the region’s port is just starting on what could be a long, uncertain path.
Vessel traffic to and from the Port of Baltimore’s numerous terminals has been blocked since early Tuesday, when the Francis Scott Key Bridge was struck by a freighter and crumbled, killing six people. Two bodies were recovered while four more people are presumed dead.
With a partial port shutdown, little work is left for the longshoremen, counted among the port’s 19,970 cargo workers at both public and private terminals. For now, workers are unloading and delivering cargo from ships that docked north of the bridge before the container ship Dali hit a support pier just before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. One more vessel, loaded with autos, offered a bit more work when it arrived Wednesday at Tradepoint Atlantic, the Sparrows Point logistics hub outside the blocked waterway. But work at what is typically one of the nation’s busiest ports is about to dry up.
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“We have very little work left,” lasting maybe a week, said Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoreman’s Association Local 333. “We’re going to have quite a bit of people out of a job and not receiving a paycheck very shortly. …It’s going to be soon.”
The local represents about 2,500 members, and at least 2,000 are expected to be left jobless, Cowan said. But they are part of a much bigger daily workforce of 8,000 people, including terminal, rail, and tugboat operators, pilots, and truckers, who have been directly affected, Gov. Wes Moore said in a news conference Thursday evening.
In Annapolis, state legislative leaders shared a draft of a bill Friday that might help.
Under the proposal, the Department of Labor would create a temporary financial relief program for people who regularly perform paid work at the port, can’t return to work because of the closure, or don’t qualify for unemployment while the Port of Baltimore is closed.
Estimates of how long it will take to clear and reopen the shipping channel range from weeks to months. Crumpled sections of the bridge and the damaged freighter clog the Patapsco River, while recovery efforts continue. On Thursday, federal officials approved an initial $60 million request from the Moore administration to cover preliminary costs for mobilization, operations, and debris recovery.
The number of direct and indirect jobs feeling the impact, at least 100,000, represents about 10% of total employment in the Baltimore area, said Jeremy Schwarz, chair of economics at Loyola University of Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business. That may be a conservative number, he said, because estimates of indirect jobs, such as suppliers and truckers, may leave out businesses such as restaurants whose customers are port workers.
“Those workers and their families are certainly going to be hurting without relief,” Schwarz said. “That’s going to be a big strain on those families, of course through no fault of their own.”
Other concerns are whether workers can be absorbed into the workforce and what impact any reduced spending power, even temporarily, could have on demand in the local economy, he said.
“The labor market in Maryland probably has never been stronger, with low unemployment,” he said. “So it is possible that the economy is better situated than other times to absorb some of those workers. The economy’s strength is at least a plus.”
If it takes longer than expected to clear the channel, however, the port risks losing people with specialized skills, and that could make it more difficult to recover, Schwarz said.
In the short term, Cowan hopes more car-carrying vessels will arrive at the single berth at Tradepoint, home to auto terminals for BMW and Volkswagen and miles of warehouses for Amazon, FedEx, McCormick & Co., and others. On Wednesday, the Wolfsburg, a regularly scheduled “roll-on/roll-off” vessel for Volkswagen, arrived at Tradepoint. It was the first cargo to arrive since the bridge collapsed.
But the schedule remains uncertain at Tradepoint, a bustling distribution hub but one with limited capacity for ships and larger “roll on/roll off” vessels and no container terminal — although one is planned. As carriers and shippers have rerouted cargo to other port cities, Cowan worries that some of Tradepoint’s regular arrivals have been and will be diverted too.
Tradepoint officials said this week they have been in increased communication with shipping companies in hopes of taking in redirected cargo.
“Tradepoint Atlantic has an existing [roll-on/roll-off] operation that is well equipped to handle additional levels of cargo,” an official said in an email Thursday. “Plans to accept redirected cargo are underway, including the ability to handle the increased capacity.”
Kerry O’Doyle, Tradepoint’s managing director, said the hub will offer facilities that authorities can use while clearing the channel to enable shipping to resume more quickly. The logistics hub resumed operations Wednesday after assisting in search and recovery efforts Tuesday.
“Tradepoint Atlantic is committed to being an active partner during the recovery, clean up, and rebuilding process,” Doyle said in a statement.
Between $100 million to $200 million of goods sails in and out of the port daily, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said at a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon. It handled a record 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo worth $80 billion last year and ranks first among the nation’s ports for the volume of autos and light trucks, heavy farm and construction machinery, imported sugar and imported gypsum.
The port generates $3 billion in personal income annually, Senate President Bill Ferguson, a South Baltimore Democrat, said Wednesday when announcing along with other leaders in the General Assembly plans for emergency legislation to offer economic relief to displaced port workers and small businesses that serve the port.
On Thursday, the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development urged anyone whose job has been affected by the bridge collapse to fill out an online form to be connected with a Career Center for assistance.
Financial assistance can’t come soon enough for Cowan.
“We need to put money in the pockets of people who are not getting a paycheck, so they can pay their bills, feed their families, and take care of their daily needs,” Cowan said. “We need action now, and I’m sure it’s going to take a lot longer than now.”
Cowan said he hopes people will remember the role longshoremen played during the pandemic in getting products to consumers, when “a lot of that stuff came through the port of Baltimore.”
“Now the shoe’s on the other foot,” he said. “We worked through the pandemic when many weren’t working, and we were still getting goods to them. Now we aren’t working.”
Roland Rexha, secretary/treasurer of The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, a maritime union with roots in Baltimore and a training school in Easton, said his members will have to make adjustments but won’t be out of work. The union, with several hundred members in the Baltimore area, represents engineers and deck officers on foreign and domestic ships.
“We’ll be able to adapt, but I worry about my brother and my sister union, the longshoremen. They’re going to be the ones hurting,” Rexha said. “If you see somebody who’s down on their luck, this is the time to try to pick each other up.”
He describes the port ecosystem as a “giant heart, and every port a chamber of that heart. If one chamber fails, every other chamber has to push harder to make up for that failure,” he said. “The impact is going to be astronomical,” slowing down the supply chain and making goods less accessible.
Local 333 officials are working to help their members on several fronts, Cowan said. They’re encouraging workers to file for unemployment, seeking relief from the union’s international arm, and working to preserve health and other benefits.
It’s too soon, Cowan said, for many workers to know what’s next.
“I think it’s still sinking in, to be honest,” he said. “We’re hopeful that the channel’s going to be open quickly, and they’re going to get back to work.”
After a yearlong closure, a bridge over the Puyallup River reopened in 2019 with a sturdy new span and a brand new name. It even won a national award.
But today, the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge is closed again after federal officials raised concerns about a vintage section of the nearly century-old bridge that carried about 15,000 vehicles a day. It has no timetable to reopen because the city of Tacoma, Washington, first must raise millions of dollars to clean and inspect it.
“It’s frustrating — and hard to comprehend how we got here,” said Ed Wallace, whose Harley-Davidson motorcycle store has lost customers since the nearby bridge was shuttered.
Bridges fulfill a vital function that often goes overlooked until lives are lost or disrupted by closure or collapse, like that of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday. That bridge crumpled when struck by a cargo ship, not because of poor maintenance. But thousands of others stand in worse shape.
About 42,400 U.S. bridges are in poor condition, yet they carry about 167 million vehicles each day, according to the federal government. Four-fifths of them have problems with the legs holding them up or the arms supporting their load. And more than 15,800 of those bridges also were in poor shape a decade ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.
One of those persistently poor bridges — carrying about 96,000 westbound vehicles daily on Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River in Rhode Island — was suddenly shut to traffic late last year, resulting in long delays as drivers diverted to new routes. In March, the governor announced that the bridge must be demolished and replaced. That could cost up to $300 million and take at least two years to complete.
These closures illustrate a nationwide issue.
“We have not maintained our infrastructure at the rate that we should for many, many years, and now we’re trying to play catch-up,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
When an old bridge gets closed because of safety concerns, it disrupts daily commutes, business supply chains, and emergency response times by police, firefighters, and medical personnel. Yet many bridges still await replacement or repairs because the costs can reach millions or even billions of dollars.
A FUNDING INFUSION
A massive infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 directed $40 billion to bridges over five years — the largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system, which began nearly 70 years ago.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that the law already is funding over 7,800 bridge projects. One of the most notable is a $3.6 billion project in Cincinnati to build a long-awaited new bridge carrying traffic on Interstates 71 and 75 over the Ohio River at the Kentucky border.
But funding from the infrastructure law will make only a dent in an estimated $319 billion of needed bridge repairs nationwide, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.
“The bottom line is that America’s bridges need a lot of work,” Buttigieg told the AP after visiting the closed Rhode Island bridge. He added: “The sooner we can address those significant bridges, the less likely they will be abruptly taken out of service, or worse, experience the risk of a collapse.”
Inspectors rate bridges using a 0-9 scale, with 7 or above considered “good.” A “poor” rating reflects a 4 or below. A mid-range rating is considered “fair.” The nation’s poor bridges are on average 70 years old.
Even before the federal funding infusion, the number of bridges in poor condition declined 22% over the past decade as structures were repaired, replaced, or permanently closed, according to the AP’s analysis. But in recent years, more bridges also slipped from good to fair condition.
COLLAPSING BRIDGES
Though potholes on bridges can jar cars, many of the most concerning problems are below the surface. Chipping concrete and rusting steel can weaken the piers and beams that keep a bridge upright. When the condition of substructures or superstructures deteriorates too much, a bridge typically is closed out of public safety concerns.
Though rare, bad bridges can eventually collapse.
Design flaws contributed to the evening rush hour collapse of an Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in 2007. The collapse killed 13 people and injured 145 others. It also was costly financially. A state analysis estimated Minnesota’s economy lost $60 million in 2007-2008 due to increased travel time and operating costs for commuters and businesses.
In January 2022, a bridge carrying a bus and several cars collapsed over Fern Hollow Creek in Pittsburgh, causing injuries but no deaths. Federal investigators determined the steel legs had corroded to the point of having visible holes, yet inspectors failed to calculate the severity of the problem and the city failed to follow repeated recommendations.
“This bridge didn’t collapse just by an act of God. It collapsed because of a lack of maintenance and repair,” National Transportation Safety Board member Michael Graham said.
FINANCIAL CHALLENGES
Iowa has the poorest bridges, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri. The twin Burlington Street bridges in Iowa City, Iowa, exemplify the financial challenges facing old bridges. The state owns the southbound span carrying vehicles over the Iowa River while the city owns the northbound span of what’s also known as state Highway 1.
The city’s part, constructed in 1915, was rated in poor condition in the 2023 and 2013 National Bridge Inventory. Inspection reports show numerous cracks and structural deficiencies in the concrete bridge. The state’s side, built in 1968, is in much better condition.
Although the federal infrastructure law provided a grant to analyze the bridges, the split ownership has made it difficult to fund the more than $30 million estimated cost of a replacement.
“It’s not something we can just fund in a year and say: ‘Here we go, let’s do it quick,’” said city engineer Jason Havel. “It takes years of planning, years of working through dedicated funding.”
ECONOMIC EFFECTS
In Rhode Island, problems had been mounting for the I-195 Washington Bridge connecting Providence to East Providence. It closed after an engineer in December noticed the failure of multiple steel tie rods in concrete beams at two piers. A subsequent examination found widespread structural problems.
Joseph McHugh, an engineer with 40 years of experience in bridge and road construction, reviewed a draft engineering report compiled after the bridge’s closure along with inspection reports from July 2022 and July 2023.
“This failure didn’t occur overnight,” McHugh told the AP. “To me, it should have been caught by an inspection, not by a contractor or whoever was looking at what was going on.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that false payment claims for the bridge’s construction, inspection or repair were submitted to the federal government.
Marco Pacheco, who owns a liquor store along a main road in a Portuguese neighborhood of East Providence, said he believes “mismanagement,” “negligence” and “incompetence” caused the closure. His business revenue is down 20% since the bridge closed. But he’s even more concerned about the long-term consequences.
“That traffic doesn’t instantly come back. Folks have reshaped their patterns, their thought processes, and so on,” Pacheco said.
Business owners in Washington share similar concerns about the indefinite closure of the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge, in an industrial area near the Port of Tacoma. Several years ago, the city spent $42 million to replace a span leading up to the river. But the bridge was abruptly closed again last October after the Federal Highway Administration raised concerns that debris had prevented the inspection of potentially corroded steel connection points.
To clean and inspect the bridge, the city first must encapsulate it to protect debris from falling into the river. But the city lacks the more than $6 million needed for the project. It also has no means of paying for a potential $280 million replacement.
A nearby Interstate 5 bridge provides a good alternative but that means many motorists zoom right past an exit ramp without thinking about the Harley-Davidson store or other nearby businesses. At least one shop already has closed.
Wallace, the Harley-Davidson store owner, wishes the city could re-open the bridge, at least temporarily.
“Is there a peril that exists?” Wallace asks rhetorically. “Yeah, absolutely, a very serious one for me as a business owner.”