Friday, May 17, 2024 – Tuesday morning, March 26, 2024. The breaking news took our breath away as we heard about a cargo ship hitting the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD. Immediately, we began to envision 9/11 happening all over again, only this time, the terrorist attack came in the water rather than the air. This fear was quickly dispelled, even though the events were certainly tragic.
The cargo ship Dali, registered in Singapore, weighs in at 95,000 tons and is almost 1,000 feet long. Dali left the Port of Baltimore at 12:44 a.m., heading to Colombo, Sri Lanka. The timeline of events spelled disaster!
12:51 a.m.: The Dali’s status is changed to “under way using engine…”
1:09 a.m.: Two tugboats guiding the Dali leave once the ship turns to begin its departure out of the port waters.
1:18 a.m.: A port call for the departure of the Dali was recorded on myshiptracking.com.
1:24 a.m. to 1:26 a.m.: Dali appears to begin turning toward one of the vital bridge supports at a speed of around 8 knots, or about 9 mph.
1:24:59: The sounds of numerous alarms are recorded on the ship bridge’s audio. The ship’s power goes out, flickers partially back on a minute later, and goes out again by 1:26 a.m. Black smoke billows from the ship.
1:26:39: With the power outage likely impacting navigation, the pilot radios for a tug boat. A pilot association dispatcher, meanwhile, phones a Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer to report the ship’s loss of power.
1:27:04: The pilot orders the Dali to drop an anchor and issues steering commands. Cars and trucks continue to travel on the roadway.
1:27:05 a.m. to 1:29 a.m.: The pilot issues a mayday alert to the Coast Guard. Maryland Transportation Authority Police stop bridge traffic in both directions. A handful of vehicles cross the bridge as the Dali closes in on the bridge’s western steel support column.
1:27:53 a.m. – An officer asks whether a construction crew is working on the bridge. “Just make sure no one’s on the bridge right now. I’m not sure what — there’s a crew up there. You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily,” a dispatcher responds.
1:28:25 a.m. – A half minute later, an officer says he’ll grab the construction workers when backup arrives. But there’s no time.1
1:28:45 a.m. – The Dali has struck the southwest pier of the central truss arch span.
1:29:39 a.m. – The pilot of the Dali reports the collapse of the bridge.2
Video shows steel twisting as if it were taffy, plunging eight people into the water. Two would be rescued but six were fatalities. Besides the tragedy of lost lives, this will have significant effects on the Baltimore economy. “Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. secretary of transportation, said last week that, normally, between $100 million and $200 million in cargo moves in and out of the port in Baltimore each day. And that affects $200 million in wages, he said. He said there’s 8,000 jobs directly affected by the port’s activities.”3
There are many spiritual applications that could be drawn from this event. The first of these would be a hope that those workers who perished were ready for eternity because their death came suddenly and unexpectedly. Ecclesiastes 9:12 says, “For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.” Therefore, we need to know that we are ready at any moment for death. The only way to be ready is to know Jesus as Savior.
The second observation is how quickly a good day can turn bad. Roughly seven minutes from the time that the tugboats left the Dali is all it took for everyone’s lives to change forever. We just never know what’s around the corner. Proverbs 27:1 warns, “Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Aren’t you glad that GOD knows what the day is going to bring, and we can trust Him with it?
The final thought I’ll share is about the metal. To see those massive amounts of steel twist as they did baffles my mind. It’s a reminder that so often, we think ourselves to be strong, mighty, and nearly invincible. We will daringly flirt with sin, skipping around the edges as if we will never slip. Or, with an air of smugness, we will pat ourselves on the back when someone else falls, believing it won’t happen to us. 1 Corinthians 10:12 reminds us, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
We are all like that bridge. Hit hard enough and with the right thing, we can crumble, twisting to the ground in an unrecognizable heap.
Let’s learn these lessons from a bridge and the tragedy that took place.
1https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/28/key-bridge-collapse-timeline/
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_collapse
3https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1242327964/the-economic-impact-of-the-baltimore-bridge-collapse
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
