Wake-up Call (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore (Shutterstock)

I woke up Tuesday to the news that the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Interstate 695 near Baltimore had collapsed into the Patapsco River after being struck by a cargo ship. Just hearing that on NPR was horrific enough, but the video was jaw-dropping.

I am always hesitant to make predictions because I’m invariably wrong, but this time I was right. I told my husband that this disaster would be more complicated than just a ship being steered badly. This kind of catastrophe is almost always the result of a cascade of failures, none of which would be as catastrophic alone.

Within hours, we understood that the container ship Dali, as long as three football fields, had lost propulsion — and perhaps all power — shortly before impact with a bridge piling, giving just enough notice for first responders to stop additional traffic from entering the bridge. The Dali had reportedly been cited for a “deficiency” in its propulsion machinery nine months ago.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the Key Bridge was “fully up to code,” but British newspaper The Guardian pointed out that the 47-year-old structure “was conceived before an age of supersized container ships.” Plus, those of us who travel east on Interstate 40 have learned that a bridge can be structurally compromised without anyone realizing it, not even the people responsible for those things. Mercifully, the crack in the Hernando de Soto Bridge was discovered in time to prevent a tragedy.

The business lesson here is to fix identified issues as soon as possible, whether in your equipment or your processes, and to create a management culture that wants to know about errors, failures and near misses. The next time might be compounded by some other failure you can’t control.

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By the time you read this, I will have vacated the editor’s chair at Arkansas Business — again. I gave it up in 2021, after 22 years, in favor of less-than-full-time work and just managing myself. Then my friend and successor Lance Turner decided to try something new away from Arkansas Business Publishing Group at the end of 2023, and I was happy to help out as interim editor while my boss, Mitch Bettis, found the right person to be captain of this fantastic team.

That is truly how I have seen the editor’s role here, as a team captain so that we’re all on the same page and executing a common strategy to reach a common goal. Our new editor, Hunter Field, is far more prepared by previous experience than I was when I first took the job. We’re lucky to have him, and he’s lucky to have an experienced team just looking for a captain.

Gwen Moritz a contributing editor at Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Email her at gmoritz@abpg.com