A look back at Bay Area's bridge disasters in wake of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse

meanwhile a container ship did hit the Bay Bridge back in 2007 ripping open its Hull and spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the bay ABC7 news reporter Amanda del Castillo is at the live desk for us with a look at the Costco Busan incident and other incidents involving Bay Area Bridges Amanda Julian Kristen that happened nearly 17 years ago the container ship in heavy fog hit the Bay Bridge that gushed tens of thousands of gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay it had a major impact on

our ecosystem though no humans died the crash and its aftermath killed thousands of birds and fish the Barb pilot on that ship spent 10 months in prison after investigators found he was traveling too fast and was on prescription drugs when the accident happened but that wasn't the worst bridge disaster in our area in 1989 the LMA Prieta earthquake caused the Cypress Street viaduct in Oakland to collapse killing 42 people the double-decker freeway connect at interstate 880 to the Bay Bridge Appro

ach violent shaking from the Quake brought the upper deck crashing down onto cars onto the lower deck a span at the Bay Bridge also collapsed during that Quake killing one person we spoke with the professor of civil and environmental engineering at San Jose State who says the bridge collapse in Baltimore reminded him of the Old Bay Bridge well that's what I first saw saw was that it looked very similar to Old Oakland Bay Bridge um and it's kind of still built the same it was built in much the sa

me situation where the structure quote can levers from the main towers and then uh closes off to make a complete span uh even a modern bridge is not going to be designed to withstand what seems to be a a direct hit from a major uh container ship and some ways our bridges might may do better obviously on the East Coast they don't need to worry so much about earthquake effects as we do out here on the West Coast and that would certainly make our bridges more robust and they can probably um absorb

uh uh shock better but they would still be very vulnerable to that kind of a ship