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Just following up on this again since reading some more this morning, there's a closer comparison with the Sunshine Skyway collapse in Florida in 1980. Similar (somwhat smaller) bridge to the one in Baltimore hit by a (much smaller) freighter during a squall. Sadly that bridge was open at the...

Much smaller bridge than the one in Baltimore, but it does bare out the point that the ship doesn't need to be anywhere near as big as the one involved yesterday to cause damage. I'm very dubious about the "they didn't have container ships that big when it the bridge was built in the 70s" line...

That bridge isn't vulnerable to being hit by ships or boats though, simply because it isn't there anymore. It was also a much older (by 100years or so) and more flimsy bridge than the one in Baltimore.

A few things about this as a bridge engineer: The piers clearly aren't able to take an impact anywhere near what they were subject to (that is, the size of the ship isn't really the issue, a smaller ship could have caused a similar collapse). The electric lines immediately upstream from the...