Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jill Wisenthal.
Speaker 2: So, Joe, this is an emergency episode of Odd Thoughts.
Speaker 2: Anyone waking up on Tuesday morning would have seen the
Speaker 2: very very dramatic news coming out of Baltimore.
Speaker 3: I slept in today and now I'm never going to
Speaker 3: make that mistake again, because then I walked into the
Speaker 3: office and I literally asked, Tracy, is there's some sort
Speaker 3: of huge port disaster?
Speaker 2: And so yes, And I thought you were trolling me initially,
Speaker 2: but it turned out you hadn't actually seen the news.
Speaker 2: So what happened this morning? We are recording on March
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, and a container ship called Dolly crashed into
Speaker 2: the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. This is the
Speaker 2: Key Bridge in many senses of the word. It is
Speaker 2: a vital commuter lane and it is just outside the
Speaker 2: Port of Baltimore, which means ships go under it in
Speaker 2: order to get in and out of the port. What
Speaker 2: we know so far about the ship is it was
Speaker 2: a Singaporean flagship. It was chartered to Marisk the shipping giant,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of reminiscent a little bit of what
Speaker 2: happened in March twenty twenty two in the Chesapeake Bay
Speaker 2: with the ever forward. But it seems like the results
Speaker 2: of this are much more dramatic. So the bridge is
Speaker 2: entirely collapsed as we are recording this. The search and
Speaker 2: rescue mission is still underway. They're still looking for survivors
Speaker 2: of this tragedy. So clearly a loss of life there.
Speaker 2: But Joe, this opens up a whole bunch of questions
Speaker 2: about how exactly this happened, what it means for shipping
Speaker 2: and freight, what it means for the wider economy.
Speaker 3: Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna be speaking with one of our
Speaker 2: favorite all blaw guess. We're speaking with Salmur Coccliano, professor
Speaker 2: at Campbell University and the host of the What is
Speaker 2: going On with Shipping Show on YouTube. Sal you've become
Speaker 2: the person that everyone calls whenever there's a maritime disaster, it.
Speaker 4: Seems it does, and unfortunately that phone rings a little
Speaker 4: too often some days.
Speaker 3: Why don't we just start with, as of right now,
Speaker 3: the basics of what you understand happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Dolly was just finishing up an East coast
Speaker 4: run and it hit a couple of East coast ports.
Speaker 4: It was leaving the port of Baltimore heading down to
Speaker 4: the Panama Canal and was heading over to Sri Lanka
Speaker 4: to the port of Colombo. The ship is owned by
Speaker 4: a company out of Singapore, which is not unusual, and
Speaker 4: it's actually at least an operated for Marisk Lines. The
Speaker 4: ship had on board two Maryland pilots, Chesapeake Bay pilots.
Speaker 4: The ship was doing as it normally would do a
Speaker 4: ship just before it had come off the Secrit Terminal.
Speaker 4: This is the Terminal Container terminal just outside of Baltimore,
Speaker 4: but it's inside the harbor. There, the ship had gotten
Speaker 4: into the channel and was heading outbound at about eight
Speaker 4: knots and everything seemed to be normal. Now, there are
Speaker 4: reports that when the ship was coming up the bay,
Speaker 4: and even when the ship was peer side, that the
Speaker 4: ship suffered some engineering issues. There were some issues with
Speaker 4: black smoke, there was some issue with power loss. But
Speaker 4: before the ship ever would have thrown off lines, it
Speaker 4: would have done a series of tests at the dock
Speaker 4: to make sure that it had propulsion, it had rudder control,
Speaker 4: and it would have been cleared to leave. And a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, this ship was recently inspected by the
Speaker 4: US Coast Guard under a port state agreement. The ship
Speaker 4: headed southbound, and what we have is both the information
Speaker 4: from marine traffic and from video provided from the Port
Speaker 4: of Baltimore, and what we see in these two images
Speaker 4: is the ship as it was heading toward the Franciscott
Speaker 4: Key Bridge, lost power. The ship went dark. And as
Speaker 4: a form mariner, I could say this that the worst
Speaker 4: feeling I've ever had on a ship is when everything
Speaker 4: goes quiet. There's always noise. There's always you know, because
Speaker 4: that's a sign that you've dropped the plant. In other words,
Speaker 4: you've lost the engine. And silence is deadly. It just
Speaker 4: means everything has gone wrong. Now you have ae hundred
Speaker 4: thousand ton ship at eight knots roughly about ten miles
Speaker 4: an hour, with no control, and very quickly, within ten
Speaker 4: fifteen seconds we see lights come back on, but that's
Speaker 4: not clear that the ship's engines had come back on.
Speaker 4: That could be the emergency backup engines coming on to
Speaker 4: give you propulsion. We know, and I've talked to a
Speaker 4: tug operator in Baltimore. They heard the ship's pilot and
Speaker 4: then remember ships will have a crew on board. We
Speaker 4: believe this crew to be an Indian crew, So the
Speaker 4: ship's master is ultimately in control of the vessel. Masters
Speaker 4: are ultimately responsible. But there were two Maryland pilots on board.
Speaker 4: Pilots assist, they provide expertise, but they don't take command.
Speaker 4: But one of the pilots signaled in may day that
Speaker 4: they had lost propulsion. They were heading for the bridge
Speaker 4: and in the background alarms were sounding and that would
Speaker 4: have been the loss of power alarms up on the bridge.
Speaker 4: After the ships lights came back on, we see a
Speaker 4: distinct pail of black smoke come out of one of
Speaker 4: the ship's smokestacks. That's usually an indication that not only
Speaker 4: is the engine coming back online, but they're probably trying
Speaker 4: to back down with the engine. They're forcing fuel into
Speaker 4: the engine to get it to go into reverse, and
Speaker 4: looks like what they were trying to do was slow
Speaker 4: down the vessel. Unfortunately, that was not sufficient. There'd be
Speaker 4: a big question during the investigation, which will probably be
Speaker 4: led by the Coast Guard and NTSB, what was the
Speaker 4: orders given up on the bridge. There's a vessel data
Speaker 4: recorder that is independently powered. It has a battery backup,
Speaker 4: so we will get this. It'll have the information from
Speaker 4: the ship like a plane's black box, but also the
Speaker 4: recordings from the bridge. Did they order a stern move
Speaker 4: that they tried to steer the vessel. One of the
Speaker 4: things I worry about is they tried to back down,
Speaker 4: and when you try to back down a vessel that
Speaker 4: big at that speed, you start to lose helm control
Speaker 4: because you create this disturbance in the water around the propeller.
Speaker 4: And what we do know is the ship then continued
Speaker 4: it's kind of slant to the south. It was being
Speaker 4: pushed by both the wind coming out of the north
Speaker 4: and also the torque of the propeller, and it impaled
Speaker 4: itself up against the southern pilon of the Francis Scott
Speaker 4: Key Bridge, and that resulted in the collapse of the
Speaker 4: bridge actually onto the bow of the vessel. We know
Speaker 4: the ship dropped its port anchor because you can see
Speaker 4: it down and it's streaming aft. So they try to
Speaker 4: do it, but an anchor at eight knots is just
Speaker 4: going to drag the bottom. It's not going to stop.
Speaker 2: So the collapse of the bridge is clearly a dramatic
Speaker 2: development and makes this particular incident very different to things
Speaker 2: like the ever forward running aground. But I guess one
Speaker 2: question I have is what's a reasonable expectation here for vulnerability?
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is is the expectation
Speaker 2: that container ships just don't ever go into bridges, which
Speaker 2: would seem like a good thing. Or should bridges be
Speaker 2: able to withstand ships running into them? Like are there
Speaker 2: particular protections around bridges? I've seen concrete barriers and things
Speaker 2: like that. I guess in general, it just seems kind
Speaker 2: of crazy to think that you have thousands of ships
Speaker 2: going under these giant structures on a day to day
Speaker 2: basis around the world, and if something goes wrong with
Speaker 2: one of them, then the entire bridge can collapse.
Speaker 4: Right, So I mean, you really come into I say it,
Speaker 4: but it's almost a cost benefit analysis. How much protection
Speaker 4: do you want to put around the pillars of a bridge.
Speaker 4: This ship hit the southern pillar almost head on at
Speaker 4: eight knots to probably about seven knots one hundred thousand tons.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of force. I mean, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I'm not an engineer when it comes to building bridges,
Speaker 4: but I'm not exactly sure how much force and area
Speaker 4: you have to build around a bridge for that. The
Speaker 4: pilings were not, you know, right up against the side
Speaker 4: of the channel. This ship came out of the channel,
Speaker 4: so it maneuvered out of what is then the normal channel.
Speaker 4: You know, when we had discussions about ever given for example,
Speaker 4: when it grounded in the Suez or ever forward, when
Speaker 4: it came out of Baltimore, you know, one of the
Speaker 4: questions was, well, maybe it should have tugboats with it
Speaker 4: at all times. It's not exactly clear that even if
Speaker 4: you had tugs it would have prevented this from happening. Plus,
Speaker 4: tugs incur a big cost. Because there are dozens of
Speaker 4: ships a day coming in and out of port at times,
Speaker 4: you would need a lot of assets to do it.
Speaker 4: It would raise costs for it. It's hard to harden
Speaker 4: your infrastructure to the point where everything would be safe
Speaker 4: from every eventuality. If the ship had dropped its plant
Speaker 4: a minute earlier, a minute later, this never happens. The
Speaker 4: ship may have you know, lost propulsion, it may have anchored,
Speaker 4: and we probably wouldn't even be talking about this. But
Speaker 4: because it happened at this key moment. And one of
Speaker 4: the things we've talked about in the past is one
Speaker 4: of the things we've done with global shipping is not
Speaker 4: just increase the volume of cargo that's moving around the world,
Speaker 4: but the velocity of it, and so that leaves very
Speaker 4: little time for what is usually needed for you know,
Speaker 4: you know, repairs and upkeep and all all that aspect.
Speaker 4: We are moving cargo at an ever greater rate, and
Speaker 4: so there's a very small margin of error right now
Speaker 4: that we have, and unfortunately, we're seeing these accidents take place.
Speaker 3: When you think in your mental encyclopedia about past disasters,
Speaker 3: obviously our mind goes to the ever forward because it
Speaker 3: was in Baltimore. But are there other incidents that this
Speaker 3: reminds you of.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, go back to the eighties to the Tampa
Speaker 4: bridge incident, where you had a collapse of the bridge
Speaker 4: almost a very similar thing. Vessel was much smaller at
Speaker 4: the time, but you had a vessel out of control
Speaker 4: hit the bridge and cause a collapse of the bridge
Speaker 4: in Tampa. We saw it in San Francisco in the
Speaker 4: early twenty tens where we had a a hit, but
Speaker 4: that was a glancing hit up against the pilings didn't
Speaker 4: really get to the bridge structure. Where we've seen it
Speaker 4: more than anything else is actually in coastal waters, in
Speaker 4: inland waters where we've seen this on the Mississippi and
Speaker 4: the Ohio River, where we've seen these incidents take place
Speaker 4: in other places. But again, Baltimore is it is not
Speaker 4: a big port in terms of the United States. It's
Speaker 4: not even in the top ten of ports. But it's
Speaker 4: a port that does seventy four billion dollars of business
Speaker 4: a year. It moves forty three million tons of cargo,
Speaker 4: so there's a lot of cargo moving in and out.
Speaker 4: And you know, we've talked about the idea about infrastructure
Speaker 4: and how much we need to kind of improve infrastructure.
Speaker 4: One of the limitations on the Port of Baltimore has
Speaker 4: been the Francis Scott Key Bridge because of its height
Speaker 4: and the nature of the bridge. So you know, we
Speaker 4: don't unfortunately spend enough on hardening and improving our infrastructure,
Speaker 4: especially in the maritime environment.
Speaker 2: What's the media impact on shipping? So the Dolly is
Speaker 2: still there under the wreckage of the bridge. A bridge
Speaker 2: wreckage itself is obviously absolutely massive and it's going to
Speaker 2: take some time to move that we know there are
Speaker 2: ships still stuck in the Port of Baltimore. What about
Speaker 2: other ships? Do they just get rerouted to New York
Speaker 2: or Norfolk? And how much of a disruption is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so Port of Baltimore will be closed
Speaker 4: for the foreseeable future. I mean, even once Dolly is
Speaker 4: removed from it. You've got to remove the entire structure
Speaker 4: of the bridge from the main shipping channel, so it
Speaker 4: is effectively closed. So whoever's in Baltimore is staying in Baltimore.
Speaker 4: The ship's going into Baltimore. You can re route some
Speaker 4: of them, But the problem is Baltimore is a very
Speaker 4: well rounded port. It does a little bit of everything.
Speaker 4: So you can offload containers in other facilities, that's not
Speaker 4: really a big issue, but it's a big car terminal.
Speaker 4: So you're talking about having to offload cars in other
Speaker 4: facilities maybe up in New Jersey or up in New England,
Speaker 4: or down in Savannah or Brunswick and Georgia. But then
Speaker 4: you're gonna have to move those cars up to the
Speaker 4: region of Baltimore. The biggest issue here is going to
Speaker 4: be the export of coal. Baltimore is a major port
Speaker 4: for export of coal. And it's not like you can
Speaker 4: just move the coal to another facility, because you need
Speaker 4: specialized facilities for that, and the facilities that do exist
Speaker 4: are largely at capacity. So this is going to be
Speaker 4: a big problem. If you look at imagery of marine
Speaker 4: traffic or any other ais, you'll see just south of
Speaker 4: the Bay Bridge a fleet of vessels waiting to get
Speaker 4: into Baltimore, and then another one larger down to Chesapeake.
Speaker 4: So this shutting down to the port of Baltimore is
Speaker 4: going to have a major impact on the transportation of
Speaker 4: energy out of the United States, in this case coal.
Speaker 3: So I remember when we you know, when we talked
Speaker 3: about the situation in the Suez several years ago. You
Speaker 3: know this idea of specialized local captains or pilots who
Speaker 3: would just be on the ship for that one part
Speaker 3: navigating the canal, and then they would get off and
Speaker 3: then the normal crew and takeover. Is it the same
Speaker 3: situation when you said, okay that there was a I think,
Speaker 3: did you say a pilot or what is the role?
Speaker 3: There was a Maryland someone from Maryland? Is it the
Speaker 3: same sort of thing? We're in that specific area, there
Speaker 3: will be people on the ship who just know how
Speaker 3: to navigate that thing, and then they get out after
Speaker 3: the ship leaves the water.
Speaker 4: Exactly, you would have two Chesapeake Bay pilots on board.
Speaker 4: We know there's two on there, so they would provide
Speaker 4: that expertise for the area. They would actually you would
Speaker 4: have a docking pilot who would undock the vessel. The
Speaker 4: docking pilot would probably get back off the vessel once
Speaker 4: it's off the berth, and then the two Bay pilots
Speaker 4: would stay on board until the vessel sailed out of
Speaker 4: Hampton Roads through Chesapeake Bay to come out. They know
Speaker 4: the lay of the land. But if you remember what
Speaker 4: happened with ever forward, the incident that was later determined
Speaker 4: to have caused the grounding was the one pilot who
Speaker 4: was on board at the time was distracted, was on
Speaker 4: his computer and missed a key turn. It's not you.
Speaker 4: I would argue that we don't see an issue here
Speaker 4: with pilot at all. This doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 4: pilot error. It doesn't even seem to be a maneuvering
Speaker 4: or here. Again, we could talk about judgment later on
Speaker 4: about whether or not they should have gone in the
Speaker 4: stern if that's what they did. But this seems to
Speaker 4: be a mechanical issue that has been the issue that
Speaker 4: plagued the vessel. And again, a pilot wouldn't really know
Speaker 4: this coming on board. This is the ship's crew knowing
Speaker 4: what is the status of their vessel, both mechanically and
Speaker 4: the ability of it to sail.
Speaker 2: We have limited information so far, and as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: there is surely going to be a very long and
Speaker 2: ongoing investigation into this particular incident. But it does seem
Speaker 2: like some things were done right. So we know the
Speaker 2: ship dropped anchor. We know they made a may day
Speaker 2: call which seems to have gotten some of the cars
Speaker 2: off the bridge and potentially save lives. But how do
Speaker 2: you sort of stack up the actions of the ship
Speaker 2: from what we know so far or the crew.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean again, until we get the full detail,
Speaker 4: it's really hard to say. But you know, based on
Speaker 4: the reports coming in, it sounds like they did everything
Speaker 4: they could have done. You know, the anchor is just
Speaker 4: not going to stop a vessel at that speed. It
Speaker 4: may look like you can do it in movies, but
Speaker 4: it's not in real life because of the momentum of
Speaker 4: the vessel. It's extremely hard. We know the port anchor
Speaker 4: is down because we see the imagery of it, which
Speaker 4: would be the right anchor to drop Because you're trying
Speaker 4: to drag the ship back into the channel to get
Speaker 4: it back in there. The coordination between the pilot on
Speaker 4: the vessel with the bridge and trying to get vehicles
Speaker 4: off is key. Unfortunately, they were not able to stop
Speaker 4: all the vehicles on it. But again, you know, one
Speaker 4: of the big questions that I have going in is like, Okay,
Speaker 4: what is the track record of this vessel? Did this
Speaker 4: vessel encounter issues coming up where there systematic maintenance problems
Speaker 4: with the vessel? Did it drop power while coming up
Speaker 4: to Chesapeake Bay? We don't know that for sure. You know,
Speaker 4: I've heard reports of the vessel did have some black
Speaker 4: smoke coming out of it, which is not always unusual.
Speaker 4: But even if it was up at the berth, whether
Speaker 4: instances of that was the vessel ready to go? Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: what tends to happen here is unless there's a full
Speaker 4: inspection being done. Not every vessel that comes into the
Speaker 4: US ports are inspected. They are done periodically. They will
Speaker 4: be cleared by Customs and Coastguard, but they won't do
Speaker 4: a full inspection of the vessel and even and then
Speaker 4: we rely entirely on the ship and the ship's crew
Speaker 4: and the ship's operating company to ensure that ships are
Speaker 4: meeting their standards. We rely on that because that's the
Speaker 4: way international shipping operates, and the Singapore flag is a
Speaker 4: good registry. It's a very good registry. This ship was
Speaker 4: under leased to Merisk, but it wasn't a Marisk ship.
Speaker 4: You'll notice there's no name on the side of the vessel,
Speaker 4: no company. This is basically like a rental vessel that
Speaker 4: they used to fill in for surge at the time.
Speaker 4: So there's going to be have to go back to
Speaker 4: Singapore where the company is based to find out what
Speaker 4: was the history of this vessel, did it maintain its maintenance?
Speaker 4: The Classification Society, which is that third party that exists
Speaker 4: outside of the registry and the ownership that's supposed to
Speaker 4: ensure that everything is being done. It takes time to
Speaker 4: go through this, and that's what this is going to entail,
Speaker 4: especially because of the loss of life associated with this incident.
Speaker 3: With the stipulation that there's obviously tons we don't know
Speaker 3: currently give us an overview of sort of what maritime
Speaker 3: law says about the like distribution of penalties and fines
Speaker 3: and costs for damages and repairs and things like that.
Speaker 4: Liability, right, and so this is something we had a
Speaker 4: conversation with back with ever Forward at the time. So
Speaker 4: obviously you know the ship has insurance for both the
Speaker 4: ship itself and the cargo, so you can expect that
Speaker 4: the owner of the ship would declare general average, which
Speaker 4: would basically spread the cost of liability not just across
Speaker 4: the ship but across the cargo. The crew will be held.
Speaker 4: The coast Guard probably almost immediately went on board that
Speaker 4: vessel and would have drug tested, alcohol tested everybody on board.
Speaker 4: They will get depositions from them, try to find out
Speaker 4: there will be liability issues for whether or not there
Speaker 4: was negligence. In the case of what happened back in
Speaker 4: San Francisco in the twenty tens, they actually found the
Speaker 4: pilot to be libel at that time and there was
Speaker 4: actually a criminal case against him for his negligence with
Speaker 4: a jail sentence involved. So we can see punishments against
Speaker 4: the crew, We can see issues with the pilots depending
Speaker 4: on whether or not there's culpability, but definitely with the
Speaker 4: owners of the company. The question is going to be
Speaker 4: does that go as far as Marisk Lines, who is
Speaker 4: leasing the vessel, or will it be with this Singapore company.
Speaker 4: As you know, in shipping, one of the things that
Speaker 4: happens a lot is ships are incorporated into these kind
Speaker 4: of shadow corporations to basically diffuse liability. You know, the
Speaker 4: ship isn't owned by Marisk, there's no direct connection to it.
Speaker 4: It goes through a series of subcontracts and the question
Speaker 4: becomes how much of that liability will be there. It
Speaker 4: will also go to the insurance clubs, the P and
Speaker 4: I for the cargo, the hull and machinery for the vessel,
Speaker 4: and they'll be assessing that damage. Plus we can see
Speaker 4: liability claims come in from those who have been killed
Speaker 4: or wounded on the bridge, and we can also see
Speaker 4: the same thing for cargo. Now that's going to divert
Speaker 4: because of this, because they're going to blame extra costs
Speaker 4: for doing this. The amount of liability that's at play
Speaker 4: here is I can't even fathom right now. This is
Speaker 4: the thing about maritime cases is that they can just
Speaker 4: blow up into numbers that just really boggle the mind
Speaker 4: at times because of the impacts that have the butterfly
Speaker 4: effects down the entire supply chain.
Speaker 2: So there's three sort of core a lots concepts that
Speaker 2: seem to be involved in the current discussion of this incident.
Speaker 2: One of them you just mentioned, so the law of
Speaker 2: General averages. The other two are the Foreign Dredge Act
Speaker 2: of nineteen oh six and of course the Jones Act.
Speaker 2: You knew it was inevitable that we would bring up
Speaker 2: the Jones Act at some point in this discussion. But
Speaker 2: how are we seeing those conversations play out in light
Speaker 2: of this tragedy.
Speaker 4: Well, let's go to Dredge Act for a second, because
Speaker 4: one of the big issues. Once we get past the
Speaker 4: rescue and the recovery option here, which is going to
Speaker 4: take time. Seven people still missing, that's going to be
Speaker 4: the priority right now. But once that is accomplished, then
Speaker 4: you're going to have to start talking about salvage and
Speaker 4: you're going to need bring in a lot of salvage equipment.
Speaker 4: You have to dismantle the Francis Scott Key Bridge, you
Speaker 4: have to take it apart. You actually have to get
Speaker 4: the bridge off the bow of the Dolly. So you're
Speaker 4: talking about cranes, you're talking about barges, you're talking about
Speaker 4: all that stuff that operates in the coastal waters that
Speaker 4: would be both under the Dredge Act and under the
Speaker 4: Jones Act. So a lot of those facilities are going
Speaker 4: to come in when we watch what happened whatever forward.
Speaker 4: It took time to get cranes and barges in place
Speaker 4: that you needed to offload five hundred containers off of
Speaker 4: ever forward, this is going to be a much more
Speaker 4: laborious process. I don't know if you're going to have
Speaker 4: to dredge as much as get the bridge off the
Speaker 4: bottom and recover it. We have a lot of salvage
Speaker 4: equipment and material. The problem is it's going to be scattered.
Speaker 4: So you're talking about repositioning, bringing all that equipment and
Speaker 4: material to Baltimore. You're going to have to operate from
Speaker 4: basically one side of the bridge right now until you
Speaker 4: can get under parts of the bridge and certify you
Speaker 4: can cross those sections of the bridge that have not collapsed.
Speaker 4: So this is going to take a long time to do.
Speaker 4: Really didn'tmply at all to this. This ship was in
Speaker 4: international trade, so it stopped at multiple US ports, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't moving cargo between US ports. But it is
Speaker 4: an issue here because we're going to have to see
Speaker 4: cargo offloaded at other ports.
Speaker 2: Would you expect it to revive a debate over the
Speaker 2: Jones Act, because I think I saw some commentary to
Speaker 2: that effect, people talking about how it's a good thing
Speaker 2: that the Jones Act requires shipping on inland waterways to
Speaker 2: be done with US registered vessels because otherwise there are
Speaker 2: safety issues such as the one we just saw. And
Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily agreeing with that statement, but certainly that's
Speaker 2: a sentiment that we have seen, at least on Twitter
Speaker 2: in less than twenty four hours after this incident occurred.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think any talk about Jones Act, whether pro
Speaker 4: con is, actually takes away from this issue entirely. I
Speaker 4: think it's absolutely not a case here at all. This
Speaker 4: is a ship in international trade. Whether you repealed the
Speaker 4: Jones Act and didn't have it, it wouldn't have a
Speaker 4: case here at all. This ship is ship that operates
Speaker 4: in international trade. And you know, you can have mechanical
Speaker 4: issues on whether it's a Singapore flag vessel or a
Speaker 4: US flag vessel, and you know, the big issue here
Speaker 4: is what was done to ensure that this ship was
Speaker 4: meeting its criteria, Whether it's Jones Act or a foreign
Speaker 4: flag vessel, you would have port state control, you would
Speaker 4: have a classification agency, you would have all those elements
Speaker 4: that are there. I mean, it's not clear at all
Speaker 4: if this is American flag vessel an American crew that
Speaker 4: you don't have this accident. You know, anyone can have
Speaker 4: an accent. Again, this goes back to a larger issue.
Speaker 4: I would say that's that this takes away from, which
Speaker 4: is our investment in our maritime infrastructure. We talk about
Speaker 4: spending trillions of dollars of infrastructure money in the United States,
Speaker 4: but very little of that is going to ports. And
Speaker 4: that means that, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 4: we could talk about here is you know, what sort
Speaker 4: of monitoring are we doing for vessels coming in and
Speaker 4: out of port, so orre requiring them to provide the
Speaker 4: maintenance records of their engines so that we can do
Speaker 4: better port state control. We are overtasking the US Coast Guard,
Speaker 4: which has eleven missions. It identifies. Eleven missions is the
Speaker 4: key of the coast Guard, and one of them is
Speaker 4: inspecting foreign vessels to ensure that they're safe and operating
Speaker 4: in our waters. And when you task an organization smaller
Speaker 4: than the Police Department of New York to do this.
Speaker 4: In ports around the United States, you tend to push
Speaker 4: the extremes, and so I think we need to be
Speaker 4: talking about elements of infrastructure, and you're going to see
Speaker 4: that play out when we start talking about the salvage
Speaker 4: of the port and salvage of the bridge and the vessel.
Speaker 4: That's a big issue. Unfortunately, we do not have the
Speaker 4: salvage assets that we probably need invested in our ports.
Speaker 4: Even the Navy doesn't have these vessels anymore. They're building
Speaker 4: new ones, but they're not near completion.
Speaker 3: I've seen the bridge originally took because we're talking about freight,
Speaker 3: but obviously this is going to be a traffic nightmare
Speaker 3: for the citizens of Baltimore and the cities around that that.
Speaker 3: The Francis Scott Key Bridge took five years to build
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy seven. And I've
Speaker 3: seen estimates some I've seen sixty million. I've also seen
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten million. Given you know, it's different.
Speaker 3: We have a difficult time in this country now building
Speaker 3: big infrastructure projects. Could we do it faster? In your view?
Speaker 3: Is there a way to make it so that it
Speaker 3: doesn't take five years and billions of dollars or is
Speaker 3: this going to be extraordinary difficult for rebuilding the bridge?
Speaker 2: Oh and can we do it higher too, given that
Speaker 2: the height of the bridge seems to have been an
Speaker 2: issue for the port previously.
Speaker 4: The big thing is you don't have a plan for
Speaker 4: a bridge standing by, So I mean you've got to
Speaker 4: design this. Whatever you're going to replace it with, You're
Speaker 4: going to have to design it from scratch because no
Speaker 4: one was planning, I think, on replacing a bridge that
Speaker 4: went in service on of all days, March twenty third
Speaker 4: of nineteen seventy sevens almost forty seven years ago to
Speaker 4: the date. So you're going to have to design a
Speaker 4: new bridge. You're right. You're gonna have to design it
Speaker 4: so that the Port of Baltimore now can handle larger vessels.
Speaker 4: So you're going to talk about a higher bridge. You know.
Speaker 4: It was interesting when we saw the fire that closed
Speaker 4: sections of I ninety five. We saw very quickly work
Speaker 4: done to open that bridge up very quickly. You got
Speaker 4: a little two lane section and then expand it out
Speaker 4: so we can commit to it and provide it. But
Speaker 4: this is going to be a big infrastructure element right here,
Speaker 4: because you're going to need to obviously steal and design
Speaker 4: work being done. The salvage work will take time. It
Speaker 4: can be done faster probably than when it was originally built.
Speaker 4: But again, who's going to be paying for this? Right
Speaker 4: off the initial element, we know the state of Maryland
Speaker 4: is declared a state of emergency. FEMA is un scene,
Speaker 4: so we'll see federal assistance. This is in technically not
Speaker 4: in Maryland waters. It's in it's US waters because the
Speaker 4: US controls the waterway, so it's a federal issue for
Speaker 4: clearing this up. So it's going to have to be
Speaker 4: a large commitment. So envision seeing Congress when it gets back,
Speaker 4: hopefully do an emergency appropriation to start the process of
Speaker 4: designing the bridge and start starting that work to get
Speaker 4: it done. But this is going to be years and
Speaker 4: until you see a new bridge coming across. I think
Speaker 4: it's going to be weeks, if not at least a
Speaker 4: month or two before you clear the debris out of
Speaker 4: the river to fully open up the Port of Baltimore.
Speaker 4: You may be able to get part of it open quickly,
Speaker 4: but it's going to take time to clear all that material.
Speaker 2: All right, Salmer Cocleiano. Thank you so much for making
Speaker 2: the time to come on Odd Lots. That was a
Speaker 2: fantastic overview of what is clearly an ongoing situation. And
Speaker 2: if anyone's interested, definitely go check out Sal's YouTube show
Speaker 2: what is going on with Shipping? Sal, thank you so much,
Speaker 2: thanks for having me, Tracy, Jef.
Speaker 4: So Joe.
Speaker 2: Clearly this is a developing event and I expect we're
Speaker 2: going to see lots more information coming out on what
Speaker 2: exactly happened. But I thought Sal did an amazing job
Speaker 2: of putting it all together there what we know at
Speaker 2: this exact moment totally.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously this is audio only, but listeners really
Speaker 3: should check out sales page where he like sort of
Speaker 3: goes through the video frame by frame of what he
Speaker 3: sees going on. It's really excellent stuff. It's interesting, you know.
Speaker 3: Obviously the first question many people will have will be
Speaker 3: about economic effects beyond these sort of immediate human disaster.
Speaker 3: It's interesting this idea that like Baltimore isn't that big,
Speaker 3: but there are certain areas of specialty. Yeah, you mentioned
Speaker 3: coal exports, He mentioned car imports and the sort of
Speaker 3: non fungibility of those supply chains. So yes, maybe they
Speaker 3: could be dropped off elsewhere, but the infrastructure is not
Speaker 3: designed for that cargo, so that'll be an interesting thing
Speaker 3: to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also thought it was interesting the point about
Speaker 2: maybe making the next bridge when that actually happens, and
Speaker 2: it seems like it'll be a very very long time,
Speaker 2: but making that one higher to handle the very very
Speaker 2: large ships that we have nowadays. Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there, all right.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Trey Away. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow our guest sel Marcagliano. He's at mercagliano S. Follow
Speaker 3: our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Arman, Dashel Bennett at
Speaker 3: Dashbot and kel Brooks at kel Brooks. Thank you to
Speaker 3: our producer Moses Onam and from our Oddlots content. Go
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Speaker 3: on right now about the bridge collapse. Go check it
Speaker 3: out discord dot gg slash, odd Lots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the discord was one of the first places I
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