DETROIT (WXYZ) — Don Chandler watched the tragic Key Bridge’ collapse in Maryland for the first time. He said he had only heard about the tragedy from his buddy Fred.
“It can happen anywhere if it happened there. It’s a terrible thought," Chandler said.
The longtime friends said they’ve been fishing together and hanging out on the Detroit River for decades near the Ambassador Bridge and the new Gordie Howe bridge that's currently under construction.
They said they never fathomed the possibility of such a collision.
“I’ve never seen a container ship go through here, but everything that goes through here is not really close to the bridge itself ever,” Fred Rightmyer said.
Chandler said just driving over a bridge is already scary for some.
“My wife was scared to death. She used to go play bingo over in Canada. She was scared to death man a lot of times. She would take the tunnel instead of the bridge," he said.
He added, “Go across the Mackinac. When it gets windy, they have escorts.”
Rightmyer said, “Now, that’s a scary bridge."
He mentioned the Mighty Mac and Michigan is also home to Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron.
To get a better understanding of our state's bridges, 7 Action News spoke with Wayne State University civil engineering professor Bill Shuster.
"Although we're having issues with our infrastructure all across the United States, this tragic incident though, there was really no good outcome," he said.
Shuster said he couldn’t speak to something like the Baltimore tragedy happening to Michigan’s bridges. There are key differences, and he believes tight regulations are in place here.
He does see it as an educational moment.
“This type of ship, we really don’t see that coming into our area. But by the same token, we really need to get behind this a bit more quickly and look at the potential for these and make sure that are redundancy in these structures and that our safety systems are in place,” Shuster explained.
Professor Sherif El Twail at the University of Michigan said he’s surprised “a protection system was not built for this (Key) bridge." He said such a system would have diverted the ship away from the piers, but he suspects one wasn't implemented because of high costs.
He also noted, "Ship collisions with bridges that cause this kind of damage are extremely rare. There are about 40 recorded events in the past 65 years.”
7 Action News reached out to the U.S. Coast Guard Detroit sector for comment. The agency released the following statement:
The Coast Guard is responsible for the safe flow of people and goods via federally navigable waterways. As part of our commitment to that mission, the Coast Guard has pre-emptively created and maintained Area Contingency Plans for each of our different areas of responsibility. These plans take into account the varied partner organizations, available assets and challenges unique to that specific area.
No incident is the same and no response will be the same even in the same area, but having these plans in place before an incident occurs ensures that the Coast Guard and our partner agencies are prepared to respond to major incidents as effectively as possible.
