THE OLD INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES THE COLLAPSE OF THE BALTIMORE BRIDGE HIT BY A CARGO - DayNewsWorld

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THE OLD INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES THE COLLAPSE OF THE BALTIMORE BRIDGE HIT BY A CARGO
The collapse of the Baltimore bridge could cost reinsurers several billion dollars, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chairman of Lloyd's of London, the London insurance and reinsurance market, said Thursday. The Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, was leaving the port of Baltimore in Maryland when it struck a bridge pier. The impact caused most of the bridge to fall into the Patapsco River, blocking shipping lanes and forcing the indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the US East Coast. . Biggest Marine Insurance Loss This “tragedy has the potential to become the largest marine insurance loss on record.” The previous record was the disaster of the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia in 2012. According to analysts at Morningstar DBRS, the tragedy could result in up to $4 billion (3.71 billion euros) in insurance claims. Lloyd's, with more than 50 member companies, is active in the marine and property insurance markets. In 2022, it recorded gross premiums of more than 6 billion pounds (7.01 billion euros) in maritime, aviation and transport insurance and reinsurance. North America is its largest market. Bruce Carnegie-Brown also added that the insurer had set aside £1.6 billion in reserves over the past two years for planes stranded in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier today, Lloyd's reported a pre-tax profit of £10.7 billion for 2023. The obsolescence of American infrastructure in question Named the “Dali”, the boat began a 27-day journey, interrupted after half an hour. It measures some 300 meters long – the equivalent of three football fields – and 48 meters wide, with a draft of around 14 meters. Its maximum load is 116,000 tonnes. However, the cargo ship hit a pile of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, located in the state of Maryland in the United States, 3 km long, and caused its collapse. This was built in 1977 and was not specially designed to withstand this type of accident, while the channel did not have any protection. With a main span of 400 meters, it was the second longest continuous truss bridge in the United States. The accident, which left six people missing, now presumed dead, rekindles an old debate on the dilapidation of American infrastructure, in particular that of bridges, even if it is difficult to see how any steel structure could have withstood such a shock. The collision between the container ship Dali and the largest bridge in the Maryland metropolis shuts down a major access point for international trade on the East Coast, a strategic crossroads for automobiles, coal and sugar.

Garett Skyport for DayNewsWorld