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Maryland: Risks & Trends

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Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse (2024)

MetricFigure
Date and time 1:25 AM, March 26, 2024
Deaths 6, all construction workers on the bridge at the time
Cause The container ship Dali lost electrical power twice within seconds while leaving Baltimore Harbor, striking a bridge support pier
Ship size ~984 ft long, ~213 million lbs
Port of Baltimore closure Channel fully reopened after 11 weeks
Daily cargo value affected $100-200 million
Jobs directly dependent on the port ~8,000

The collapse happened almost instantly once the ship struck the pier, there was essentially no meaningful warning time between the vessel losing power and the bridge coming down, which is part of why the 6 workers on the span had no realistic chance to evacuate.

The Chesapeake Bay: a slow, ongoing loss of land

MetricFigure
Islands already lost to the Bay 500+
Holland Island's last house collapse 2010
Smith Island acres eroded over 150 years ~3,300
Smith Island acres still habitable ~900
Bay sea level rise rate vs. global average ~2x
Sea level rise at the Bay's mouth ~1.3 ft/century
Local rise rate (land subsidence + sea level) 4.6 mm/year (vs. 3.0 mm/year global average)

Why this isn't the same story as Florida's or Virginia's sea level rise pages

Those pages focus on flood-day frequency and infrastructure risk in major coastal cities. The Chesapeake Bay’s island communities face something more absolute: Holland Island once had over 350 residents, a church, a school, and a post office, and today it’s marsh poking through the water. Smith Island’s remaining population faces the real possibility that most of the island will be underwater by 2100. This is land loss, not just more frequent flooding of land that still exists.

What these two have in common

The Key Bridge collapse and the Chesapeake Bay’s island loss sit at opposite extremes of the same underlying point: Maryland’s infrastructure and geography both face genuine risk, one from a single catastrophic minute with almost no warning, the other from a slow-motion process measured in decades that’s just as certain to keep happening.

Sources