Buttigieg: Force of cargo ship that destroyed Baltimore bridge was ‘unimaginable’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday morning that the force of the cargo ship that rammed into and destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was “unimaginable.”

“It is difficult to overstate the level of physical force that hit this bridge all at once,” Buttigieg said during an interview on ABC News. He also added, “This is a vessel that was about 100,000 tons carrying its load, so 200 million pounds went into this bridge all at once, which is why you had that almost instant catastrophic result.”

The bridge collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning after an approximately 985-foot-long container ship lost power and slammed into one of the bridge's supports. Six members of a construction crew who were working on the bridge at the time are missing and presumed dead, according to a senior executive of the company that employed the construction workers, and one worker was hospitalized.

“What we saw yesterday was just unimaginable in terms of the proportion of that ship, the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, going directly into the key support beam of that bridge,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg reiterated during his Wednesday morning cable news show appearances that the Biden administration is prioritizing rebuilding the bridge as quickly as possible. There’s no estimate on how long that process will take, although it took five years to construct the bridge originally.

“The president made it very clear that every tool of the federal government needs to be available to Governor Wes Moore as the state of Maryland leads the work on the bridge and the port,” Buttigieg said during an interview on Fox News. “We have to make sure that funding is not an obstacle and make sure we tear down any administrative barriers, too.”

President Joe Biden vowed on Tuesday that the federal government would finance the “entire cost” of reconstruction. He plans to travel to the site in Baltimore, likely after search and rescue efforts have concluded, POLITICO previously reported.

“I’ve directed my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible,” Biden said during a press conference Tuesday.

A monumental infrastructure deal signed by Biden in 2021 authorized funding into the Federal Transit Administration's Emergency Relief Program. That is the funding mechanism that is "most likely to come into play here," Buttigieg said during a briefing at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. There was about $950 million available the last time he checked, with many projects and needs to address.

Right before Buttigieg took the podium, he received news that the Maryland Department of Transportation requested emergency relief funding, but didn't have information on exact numbers.

The Biden administration may need to turn to Congress to request additional aid, Buttigieg said. He emphasized the importance of bipartisanship in infrastructure.

"Today this is happening in Baltimore, tomorrow could be your district," he said. "We really need to stand together, red, blue and purple."