A new report reveals that several Bay Area bridges have an “unknown level of risk” for collapse and should be evaluated.
The report, released by the National Transportation Safety Board last week, recommends that 68 bridges across the United States conduct a “vulnerability assessment” to determine the risk of a ship collision. Among these bridges are six in the Bay Area: the Golden Gate Bridge, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, Carquinez Bridge, Benicia-Martinez Bridge, Antioch Bridge and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. The only major Bay Area bridges not on the list are the Dumbarton Bridge , which opened in 1927 but was rebuilt in 1984, and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The NTSB warning comes nearly a year after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after a catastrophic ship strike. A 985-foot-long cargo ship, the Dali, lost power and plowed through the bridge in the early morning of March 26, 2024, sending the bridge and several workers into the water, resulting in six deaths .
What does the report say about the 68 bridges?
A vulnerability assessment is a mathematical evaluation of how susceptible a bridge is to collapsing. According to transportation board investigators , the Baltimore bridge was “almost 30 times above the acceptable risk threshold.”…