By KAYLA PILLOFF
At approximately 1:30 AM on March 26, a 985 foot-long cargo ship knocked into the 1.6 mile Francis Scott Key Bridge, knocking into one of the support columns and causing the entire bridge to collapse in just eight seconds.
The bridge, located in Baltimore, spans across the Patapsco River, “which massive cargo ships use to reach the Chesapeake Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean,” according to ABC News. The bridge itself provides convenient transportation to local and interstate traffic, and “carried more than 12.4 million passenger and commercial vehicles in 2023,” according to a Maryland state government report issued last November.
Six workers were killed in the collapse, all doing construction work at the site. Four of the bodies have been found as of publication: Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, 35, of Baltimore; Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Dundalk; Maynor Suazo Sandoval, 38, of Owings Mills; and Carlos Hernandez, 24. Miguel Luna, 49, of Glen Burnie and Jose Lopez, 35, are still missing. All six of these workers were Latino immigrants, coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
Although Baltimore is just about an hour away, the collapse still has effects on the QO community. Lauren Carver, an English composition assistant at QO, lives in Pasadena, Maryland, around 10 minutes away from the bridge, which she has a clear view of from her apartment. She recalls waking up and reading the news, then looking out the window to no bridge. “It was an eerie feeling,” she said.
Her boyfriend, a mobile mechanic, has to deliver parts to Dundalk and Essex, she mentions what usually is a “10-minute part run is now a 2-hour part run.” She highlights how it puts her boyfriend’s work behind, “which is just a little impact, so you can imagine the big picture with everyone else and what they are facing.”
Similarly, assistant principal Phillip Yarborough has a cousin, Edward Ferrell, who uses the bridge every day for work. Ferrell usually drives over the bridge extremely early, but was supposed to go in late the day the bridge collapsed.
Yarborough describes how, for his cousin, coping with the collapse is no easy task. He mentions how Ferrell “has some emotional anxiety when it comes to leaving and going to work,” and that “he has anxiety… just thinking about driving out over any type of bridge.”
Ferrell is not the only one experiencing such anxiety post-collapse. According to Psychology Today, the psychological consequences of such a disaster could be “general anxiety, fear of crossing bridges, a vague sense of persistent loss, depression, and challenges to assumptions about safety.”
The bridge was a local staple, and a huge part of the city’s skyline. It had a lot more use outside of just transportation purposes. “My boyfriend’s family,” said Carver, “we used to always catch rockfishes under the bridge and stuff like that.” For many, dealing with the loss of the bridge is a slow and confusing process.
A fix to the collapse is not a simple task. According to AP News, “rebuilding the bridge could take anywhere from 18 months to several years, experts say, while the cost could be at least $400 million — or more than twice that.”
While Joe Biden promised that the federal government would cover the cost of the rebuilding, according to NPR, it could “potentially [set] up a funding fight with the conservative wing of the House of Representatives.”
As of now, the Baltimore City government has released a Key Bridge Response 2024 Action Plan which, as stated in the document, “outlines ongoing efforts being done in partnership with federal, state, and local partners, new support for impacted port workers, and includes lists of resources available for both businesses and workers.”
May 2024
The Prowler 