Loose Wire Blamed for Baltimore Bridge Collapse as Costs Skyrocket to $5.2 Billion

A single misinstalled wire that’s all it took to bring down a major U.S. bridge, kill six workers, paralyze a port city, and stick American taxpayers with a $5.2 billion bill.

That’s the damning conclusion of a new National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, which occurred when the cargo ship Dali lost power and slammed into a support pier in Baltimore’s Patapsco River in March 2024.

What began as a brief electrical hiccup quickly escalated into a national infrastructure disaster, and the final report lays blame at the feet of both the ship’s operators and the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA).

“This tragedy was preventable,” the report says, pointing to decades-old safety recommendations that Maryland ignored.

Here’s what the NTSB found:

• A single loose signal wire caused a full electrical blackout, disabling the Dali’s propulsion and steering.

• The ship’s crew misused a flushing pump as a service pump a shortcut the operator, Synergy Marine Group, failed to address.

• Critical electrical systems were left in manual mode, slowing recovery during the emergency.

• No vulnerability assessment was ever conducted on the bridge despite repeated recommendations.

• Highway workers were never warned in time and had no chance to evacuate before the bridge collapsed.

Even worse, Maryland officials now admit that the cost to rebuild the bridge has exploded from $1.9 billion to $5.2 billion and the timeline has been pushed back to 2030, two years later than originally promised.

For a bridge that collapsed due to a literal loose wire, that’s a staggering price tag. And while the Biden administration was quick to commit billions in federal funding, that money still comes from your pocket, not theirs.

This is government incompetence at its finest:

• A state agency that failed to assess risk even as ship sizes and traffic increased.

• A foreign-operated vessel with lax oversight and uncorrected crew practices.

• A failure to protect American workers on the job from entirely preventable dangers.

MDTA Chief Engineer Jim Harkness blamed "market factors" and inflation for the cost explosion, but the real issue is deeper. As Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy admitted last year, the final bill was always going to be "double plus" once federal money was on the hook.

The real outrage isn’t just the collapse it’s how obvious and avoidable it all was.

Maryland ignored expert warnings. The ship’s operator tolerated unsafe workarounds. And now, Maryland residents (and all American taxpayers) are stuck with a $5 billion mess, a crippled supply chain, and a dead workforce.

This isn’t just a bridge collapse. It’s a symbol of what happens when leaders cut corners, cover up negligence, and push off accountability until it’s too late.

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