Bridges Can be Protected from Ship Collisions | Port of Baltimore Bridge Collapse Rattles Supply Chains | Bridge Collapse to Trigger One of the Biggest Insurance Losses in History, and more

it in large shipping containers, like those stacked on the ship that rammed into the bridge.
Although it’s smaller than other ports on the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, it still plays a critical role in processing U.S. international trade traffic. That’s especially true for some products, such as automobiles, heavy machinery and coal. It also handles a large share of U.S. sugar imports.

Bridges Can be Protected from Ship Collisions – an Expert on Structures in Disasters Explains How  (Sherif El-Tawil, The Conversation)
I estimate, based on the published speed and weight of the MV Dali, that the impact force was in the range of 30 million pounds. This is a massive force, and you need a massive structure to withstand that kind of force. But it is doable if you have a huge pier. That might dictate the design of the bridge and what it could look like. Most likely it could not be a truss bridge. It may be a cable stay bridge that has a very large tower that is capable of taking that load.
If you cannot design for that load, then you have to consider other alternatives. And that’s what the specifications say. They’re very clear about this. And those alternatives could be to build an island around the pier or a rock wall, or put dolphins – standalone structures set in the riverbed – adjacent to it, or put on fenders that absorb the energy so the ship doesn’t come in so fast. All of these are ways you can mitigate the impact.
Engineers design structures – and bridges are no exception – for a certain probability of failure, because if we didn’t, the cost would be prohibitive. Theoretically, you could build a structure that would never fail, but you’d have to put infinite money into it. For a critical bridge of this type, we would consider an acceptable chance for failure to be 1 in 10,000 years.

After the Baltimore Bridge Collapse, We Need Clear-Eyed Assessments of the Risks to Key Infrastructure  (Marios Chryssanthopoulos, The Conversation)
Catastrophic collapses of major bridges are thankfully rare. Notable examples in the last couple of decades include the failure of the I35-W in Minneapolis in August 2007, and the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa 11 years later. When such events do occur, public attention is understandably focused on the nature of the collapse, which can extend over hundreds of meters in seconds, and its underlying causes.
Whether because of an extreme loading event or an accident, these supposedly rare events in the life of a bridge need to be assessed before they happen, and mitigation measures taken in accordance with the potential consequences. This type of analysis is known as a “risk-based consequence assessment”. The cost of taking additional measures in the near term can prevent major adverse consequences further down the road.
With many bridges being over 50 years old, we often hear that a bridge’s condition may have been compromised by deterioration and increased traffic loads – both in the size and frequency of vehicles. Also, older bridges were designed to standards that have been superseded by new knowledge and technology.

Baltimore Bridge Collapse Leaves Military Ships on Standby for War Trapped  (Alistair Dawber and Michael Evans, The Times)
Four US military cargo ships on standby for war are among the vessels trapped in Baltimore as concerns grow about the effect of the bridge collapse on the local economy and global supply chains.
Nearly a dozen ships will be unable to leave the port for an indefinite period and shipping traffic has been redirected until the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is removed.
The military vessels are reserve rapid-reaction cargo ships, part of the US Military Sealift Command, a vital organization that provides back-up for US fighting units around the globe.