Question. Been watching all the news about the bridge collapse in the Port of Baltimore. A lot of the news is talking about re-routing the ships to other east coast ports. Two of the ports I saw was Norfolk Va and Charleston SC. But they did not have the Port of Wilmington listed. We do have a cargo port there don't we? And couldn't it handle some of those extremely large cargo ships? Thanks.
Yes, there is a port in Wilmington, in fact, it was the last Confederate port to be captured, which in turn removed Lee's supply lines and brought about the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The issues are not with the port capacity but the transport capacity from the ports. Railroad transport then truck transport are the primary considerations and the infrastructure to handle the increased freight is a factor. https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...affect-rail-traffic-with-port-access-blocked/ CSX and Norfolk Southern serve the port, along with the short line Canton Railroad. The port had a record 2023 and is the largest automobile import facility on the East Coast. Last year it handled 750,000 vehicles, many of which moved inland by rail. Port of Baltimore terminals that are blocked include: CSX’s Curtis Bay Coal Piers, which handles export coal produced at mines primarily in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Seagirt container terminal and adjacent Intermodal Container Transfer Facility The Dundalk Marine Terminal, the port’s largest general cargo facility, which handles containers, automobiles, farm and construction equipment, as well as wood pulp and steel. The Fairfield automobile terminal. Port officials, in an update on X, formerly called Twitter, said vessel traffic in and out of the port is suspended until further notice. The port is still handling cargo that’s currently inside of its terminals.
Whenever news stations do a story on a subject I'm intimately familiar with (either my area of expertise or something I witnessed), they get key facts wrong. Every time. I doubt it's maliciously, but they always infer something wrong or fill in missing details mistakenly. So, just because the news didn't mention Wilmington, it doesn't really mean anything. The shipping industry knows what the next best plans are, and they will quickly work out where to send ships and how to get cargo in and out. Maybe a Wilmington local station will gather better information later, but most news stations are gathering information as quick as they can right now and don't always take the time to get it right (and may not even be aware they don't have all the information).
It will be interesting to see what the cruise ships do. I understand at least 1 or 2 were set to return to the port of Baltimore over the next few days. Each was around 2500 passengers. They said the cruise port in Norfolk was under repair/construction and might not be usable. So that would leave Bayonne, NJ or Charleston, SC as the next closest two. Both of which are not that big and will require the cruise line figuring out how to get thousands of people and their luggage back to Baltimore to pick up their cars.
