Howdy! Welcome. Happy Wednesday. Today is Nov. 19, 2025. One month until Christmas.
Today in History:
In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel, the first Egyptian President to do so.
In 1969, Pelé scored his 1,000th goal.
In 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
Birthdays today include: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Indira Gandhi, and President James Garfield.
The National Transportation Safety Board has finally released its findings on the crash between the cargo ship Dali and Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Fox News reports that:
The NTSB’s final report found that a single misinstalled wire led to a total power loss that left the Dali without propulsion or steering moments before impact. The board said the tragedy could have been prevented if Maryland had followed safety recommendations issued years earlier.
Anyone who has driven around Baltimore regularly (as I have) will tell you that the place was problematic at best. I-95, I-695, and I-83, particularly so.
Fox 45 in Baltimore has some interesting details in a report posted yesterday:
While there was, at the time of the crash, a good deal of speculation that this was a terrorist act, I was never completely sold on this idea.
The ship involved had been written up a few times for insufficient safeguards against loss of control under precisely the circumstances that we witnessed in the video.
A few weeks prior to the crash, according to reports I echoed at the time, a sister ship similarly lost power and helm control, while trying to leave a Turkish port, subsequently mowing down a row of cranes which were apparently trying to build a bridge.
Terrorists do not generally signal their acts in advance. The ship apparently called the Maryland DOT to explain that they had lost power and control and that a bridge collision was possible. A surprise attack, this does not seem to be on that strength alone.
The bridge, such as it is, is located on the eastern half of the I695 which is the outer loop around Baltimore. Which means that the eastern half of the loop can't deal with through traffic as it was designed to do. This is particularly impactful for hazardous material shipments, since Hazmat trucks are not allowed under the Ft. McHenry Tunnel on I-95 through the middle of town. These conditions force all such traffic to the already overcrowded western half of the I-695 loop. With the added traffic on the western half of the loop, running from, say, Harrisburg, Pa., to the D.C. area, the transit time is well over doubled.
The span in question is the second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazmat and was specifically built for the purpose of moving hazmat: fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, chemicals, etc.
Leaving aside the injuries and deaths that occurred incidental to this impact, this also has a national security angle to it. One of the reasons for the Interstate Highway System is the rapid movement of military units to wherever they're needed. The implications there are fairly obvious.
Additionally, Wikipedia points out that the owners and operators of the ship:
Grace Ocean Private and Synergy Marine Group filed a joint petition on 1 April in the Maryland U.S. District Court to limit their liability to about $43.6 million under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851.[23] Chief judge James K. Bredar is overseeing the proceedings.[24] On 17 April, Grace Ocean Private filed a general average declaration to require cargo owners to cover part of the salvage costs.[25]
Dali is undergoing repairs at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia
On 23 April, the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore filed papers, in the Northern District of Maryland, seeking a jury trial within the district, to obtain compensation from Grace Ocean Private Limited of Singapore (owners), and Synergy Marine PE Ltd of Singapore (managers), for the resultant financial losses. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants provided an incompetent, inattentive, improperly trained, improperly supervised crew, on an improperly maintained and unseaworthy vessel, resulting in the bridge collapse, harming the city.[26]
That's probably accurate, but how far that's going to go without pushback against the government is an open question. As the Fox article points out:
The report also faulted the MDTA for not conducting a vulnerability assessment, a step recommended by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials to identify ways to protect bridges from ship strikes.
The NTSB said contributing to the collapse "was the lack of countermeasures to reduce the bridge’s vulnerability to collapse due to impact by oceangoing vessels, which could have been implemented if a vulnerability assessment had been conducted.
Clearly, there's a lot of fault to go around, but as far as I can see, the biggest deal here is that the government in Maryland, not performing due diligence, needed to keep the bridge safe.
And finally, let's look at the plans for getting a new bridge up in its place. March of this year was a year out from the incident, and yet they hadn't even started on building a new one.
Instead of rebuilding the bridge, a goodly portion of that year was focused on environmental impact statements, making sure that the racial makeup of the workers rebuilding the bridge is within government guidelines, that they’re all unionized, and so on.
As far as I’m concerned, this is emblematic of just about anything the government tries to do. The old saying about the camel being a horse constructed by committee applies very well indeed. This is one of the major reasons why our country’s founders concentrated their efforts on limiting government.
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