Engineers Raise Questions About Bridge’s Construction as Inquiry Begins

Yet the collapse in Baltimore on Tuesday might have been avoided, some of the engineers said, if the piers had been better able to block, deflect or withstand such a collision. And some of the engineers questioned whether the bridge’s piers had adequate blocking devices that are known with a self-explanatory name: fenders. In bridge engineering, fenders can be anything from simple pyramids of rocks piled around the pylons to major concrete rings padded with slats of wood, designed to shield the bridge’s supports from damage by water or collisions.It was not clear whether any such…