It was surprising in its silence: no bombs bursting in air, land, or sea. Simply the grainy footage of a hulking container ship as its shadowy determine slowly pressured itself by the tree-trunk legs of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Then, like a sped-up scene from the silent movie period, an whole pile of matchsticks tumbled into the dredged depths of the Patapsco River. A boxer’s knees buckling within the tenth spherical of a title match. How did it occur so quick? How did it occur in any respect? Simply…How?
These solutions are nonetheless coming, however some we’ll by no means get.
We all know {that a} bridge that stood for nearly a half-century is gone. Throughout that point, it carried every thing from sedans and semis to bikes and motorhomes, 11 million per 12 months. It was the artery for hazardous supplies, which aren’t permitted in Baltimore’s underwater tunnels. For six years, it carried me on my morning commute to the US Coast Guard in Curtis Bay, the place I labored with the identical women and men now patrolling in small boats and on the lookout for survivors. It carried my two-year-old son to daycare. I inform him to take a look at the ships: “Over there! Aren’t they superior?” On winter evenings, it gave views of metropolis sunsets so lovely that it was exhausting to not wreck into the Jersey wall whereas taking all of it in.
We additionally understand it carried the identify of the person who wrote The Star Spangled Banner, his phrases nonetheless sung earlier than sports activities video games and college days. Key’s memorial buoy is painted with stars and stripes, floating proper now only a ship’s size away from the wreckage of the Dali. His paean for American resilience within the Battle of 1812 could make him Baltimore’s best hero, however he’s proper up there with Thurgood Marshall, Cal Ripken, Jr., Edgar Allan Poe, and all these characters from Barry Levinson films and The Wire.
We additionally know that eight development employees had been working the graveyard shift when the 984-foot Singaporean freighter slammed into the span. First responders rescued two. Six had been presumed useless. We all know they had been standing on the doomed span as officers at both finish stopped site visitors from coming into the bridge, saving numerous lives. We all know that they had been all heroes.
The bridge served because the gateway to the Port of Baltimore, which had made regular strides in the direction of the return of its glory days and was primed to continue to grow. It’s a world financial system, and with metal mills gone, the stevedores unloading Subarus from Japan and loading John Deeres from Iowa had their work lower out. In a city inside a metropolis, the employees had been real-life Baltimoreans doing these real-life American jobs we hear about each 4 years, which are actually within the steadiness. Provide chains might be disrupted within the foreseeable future as one-way site visitors into the delivery hub is suspended till additional discover.
There’s additionally the legacy of the laborers from the working class and immigrant enclaves of Highlandtown, Dundalk, and Sparrows Level. A lot of those that constructed the bridge are nonetheless alive and beaming with pleasure for the final 5 many years. Constructing a bridge is one thing to be happy with, whether or not you’re seven years outdated with Lego or 70 with recollections of welding metal. It’s a darkish irony that a few of the immigrant development employees who fell with the bridge lived in the identical neighborhoods as the lads who constructed it.
The issues it carried and didn’t carry are all of the issues that make Baltimore what it’s, from Underneath Armour attire to Ravens followers to drug shipments on their method south. Baltimore has been bloodied this week, even whereas older bruises nonetheless linger in a metropolis whose poverty, medicine, and struggling makes an attempt at renewal have been documented by the likes of David Simon and a brand new era of journalists at The Baltimore Banner, the nonprofit newspaper main the protection—the endless flurries of political corruption, the salt of segregation (that is the house of the NAACP), the left hooks of unconstitutional policing, adopted by the fitting jab of civil unrest. The uppercut of the pandemic and now the Key Bridge are knockdown blows.
Going ahead, it is going to be a monumental take a look at for Maryland’s younger governor, Wes Moore, who, at 45, holds workplace for the primary time. It’s, too, for President Joe Biden, who isn’t younger however who began traversing the town hundreds of instances as a 30-year-old senator and widower heading to and from his boys in Wilmington, Delaware, the smaller, banking-centered metropolis, 65 miles away. Biden promised the federal authorities would decide up the tab for the Key Bridge, however that might be more durable than it was for George W. Bush, who pushed by an enormous federal assist package deal following the 9/11 assault.
No matter occurs with the cash, Baltimore will persevere. How?
I simply revisited a video I made 2014, a spotlight reel of a few of my favourite recollections from that 12 months: weddings, highway journeys, holidays, and the like. However a lot of it was Baltimore: the month-to-month citywide rides of Baltimore Bike Occasion, the view from Federal Hill over the Internal Harbor, Christmas lights in Hampden, and the Orioles clinching the pennant at Camden Yards. Excessive-fiving pals after Delmon Younger hit the double heard a mile away within the second sport of the American League playoffs.
Additionally, in that video, I used to be within the passenger seat of my Toyota Corolla, filming some (actually poor) iPhone footage as my spouse and I drove throughout the Francis Scott Key Bridge on our strategy to someplace we’d be glad. The freeway stretched forward whereas the lattice beams above us seemed able to catch any desires making an attempt to cross county strains. 2 hundred ft under us, the start waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Pan to the fitting and its blue skies perpetually, a crimson and white container ship moved previous the deserted island of Fort Carroll moments earlier than it slipped beneath the bridge on its strategy to ship its cargo on the opposite facet.
How might we consider that arched metal span as fragile? After this century’s shocks to the system—9/11, the monetary disaster, political turmoil, and COVID-19—we must always in all probability have identified that every thing isn’t stable.
We’ll be alright. Baltimore is sweet at getting again off the sweat-soaked mat when everybody outdoors the 410 has written us off. It’s neighborhoods inside neighborhoods, with real individuals already caring for the households who misplaced family members beneath the bridge, determining get to work and rebuild.
I’d prefer to suppose there isn’t symbolism within the namesake bridge of our nationwide anthem’s creator falling into the brackish backwaters of the Patapsco on this fraught election 12 months. However perhaps there may be. Maybe the symbolism is that you just hold coming again, even when the bridges that bind us collapse within the darkest a part of the night time.
You say you possibly can see, even when you possibly can’t, if solely to present proof, by the daybreak’s early mild, that our flag continues to be there and that we’re nonetheless standing.
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