What was Baltimore’s “Key Bridge” so collapsed: 11 million vehicles a year and immortalized in the series The Wire

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which collapsed yesterday after the collision of a merchant ship, is the largest bridge in the city of the state of Maryland: it is 2,632 meters long and more than 11 million vehicles pass over it per year.

This bridge was immortalized by “The Wire”, the successful American television series set in Baltimore on the judicial wiretaps of a police group and in which many of its characters are based on real people from the city, considered by some to be one of the best series of the recent television history, a true cult piece.

Named after poet Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics to the American anthem, construction of the current bridge began in 1972 and opened on March 23, 1977. The structure spans the lower Patapsco River between Hawkins Point and Sollers Point and the I- Highway 695 (Baltimore Beltway) passes through it.

The collapsed bridge is, according to the Historic Sites organization, the heir of the one built between 1833 and 1843 with stone pillars, demolished in 1915, and of the one that replaced it, a concrete arch inaugurated in 1923 already with the name by Francis Scott Key because the artist lived in an area close to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The bridge was originally known as the “Outer Harbor Crossing”.

The bridge’s pylons and other components form an underwater barrier that attracts fish, such as sea bass or perch, which is why the location is popular with sport fishing enthusiasts. The area also attracts recreational boats, and local tourist boats and cruise ships offer travel routes near the bridge.

Boat launching ramps, a fishing pier, and bridge views are located near the western end of the bridge in Fort Armistead Park.

Each summer, the United States Coast Guard deploys a memorial buoy to the poet Francis Scott Key in the Patapsco River near the bridge. The star-covered buoy marks the approximate location where Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while attempting to facilitate the release of a prisoner held on a British ship during the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 .

Baltimore, an important seaport located on the Chesapeake Bay even before the American Revolution, is the most populous city in the state of Maryland, with just over 600,000 inhabitants in the urban core and 2,700,000 in the metropolitan area.

They rule out the possibility that it was a terrorist attack

With the recent events in Russia, where a group of Islamic extremists caused a massacre at the Crocus municipality in Moscow, causing over 130 deaths, the terrorism alert has spread across the planet.

Taking into account the background of September 11, 2001, with the attack on the Twin Towers, the hypothesis of a possible attack on the Baltimore bridge was immediately taken into consideration, but this version was discarded.

Police see “no indication” that the collapse of a major bridge in the United States after a ship crashed into it was due to a terrorist act, the US reported this morning.

“There is absolutely no indication that there was terrorism, that this was done on purpose,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said.

The ship that caused the collapse flies the flag of Singapore. It is a 48 meter wide and 300 meter long cargo ship, built in 2015, according to the MarineTraffic.com platform.

EFE