TOLEDO, Ohio — Two bridges that cross the Maumee River in Toledo could suffer the same catastrophe the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore did last year if a ship hit them, according to a report from the National Transportation and Safety Board released nearly one year after the incident that killed six people.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge and the Anthony Wayne (High Level) Bridge are two of six such bridges in Ohio — and 68 overall in the U.S. — that the NTSB says “have an unknown level of risk of collapse from a vessel collision.”
The report evaluated bridges designed before the release of the 1991 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) vulnerability assessment guidelines; it doesn’t necessarily identify structures listed in the report as imminently in danger, but it strongly urges that each of the bridges be more fully assessed for safety to at least adhere to those 1991 standards…