INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore left people questioning the safety of truss bridges after a cargo ship took it out.

Thomas O’Fallon is a senior structural designer at Boswell Engineering.

He said it would be incredibly difficult to design a bridge that could withstand a direct hit from a ship that large, but stopped short of saying it would be impossible to design and build a bridge that would survive a hit from a modern-day cargo ship.

“Not that I am aware of, or at least, not easily,” O’Fallon said. “I would go with the answer if you have enough money and enough materials you can design pretty much anything, but there is no good way to do that on an economic basis.”

O’Fallon explains a truss bridge is made of three parts: The deck where the cars drive, the trusses that provide structural support, and the piers, which are the foundation.

He said it is important to remember this ship took out an entire pier, which is a large part of the base of the bridge.

“Think about it as you’re sitting on a chair, and one of the legs of the chair gets kicked out from under you,” O’Fallon said. “Kicked out and broken underneath you. There is a chance the chair will hold up, but unlikely.”

He said bridges are designed to handle a large load, with cars, winds, and even earthquakes being taken into account.

“We can support just about anything, but it’s what do you expect to hit it,” O’Fallon said. “The normal lateral loads on a bridge here. A bridge of this type would be wind and earthquake loads. The bridge is not designed to be impacted from the side by this size of ship.”

The ship was called the Dali and came from Singapore. It was nearly 1,000 feet long, over 150 feet wide, and going about 9 mph.

O’Fallon said reinforcing the piers with wide concrete blocks could have helped, but it is impossible to know.

“Based on the size of the ship, it may not have been sufficient enough, no matter what they put up there short of almost an island around this pier,” said O’Fallon.

O’Fallon said this bridge was built in the 1970s and shipping vessels were smaller then. It is unclear if a slightly smaller ship would cause the same amount of damage.

Experts estimate this will take months to clean up.

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