Warning of Bridge Strike Risk on Washington's Columbia River

Leaders in the Columbia River shipping industry are warning that the likelihood of a large vessel colliding with the Lewis and Clark Bridge between Rainier and Longview in Washington State is increasing, raising concerns that such an impact could cause the nearly century-old bridge to collapse.

Since the construction of the modern shipping channel beside the bridge’s unprotected eastern support pier, the size of ships traveling the river has roughly doubled. Pilots navigating these vessels must estimate clearance with limited or inaccurate sensor data.

During the first weekend of February, a ship departing the Port of Longview and heading toward the Pacific Ocean lost power near the Lewis and Clark Bridge. Tugboats helped stabilize the situation, but they are not always nearby, said Capt. Jeremy Nielsen, president of the Columbia River Pilots, the group responsible for guiding vessels from Astoria to upriver ports. Each year, about two dozen ships experience engine failures somewhere along the Columbia River.

“It’s a single-point failure bridge,” Nielsen said. “If a ship hits any part of that bridge, it is coming down — the whole thing, just like the Francis Scott Key Bridge.”

That bridge in Baltimore collapsed in March 2024 after a container ship lost power and struck one of its support piers.

For more than a decade, members of the Columbia River shipping community have been urging lawmakers to recognize the potential danger of a bridge collapse and to fund improvements aimed at reducing the risk.

“It is extremely frustrating for us as pilots, because our safety margins have just decreased tremendously,” Nielsen said. “And we’re doing what we do — we’re professionals, and our job is to protect all this infrastructure — but, at some point, we need the technology there to assist.”

One example occurred in 2022 when pilots later discovered that the clearance for the 1,041-foot-long Celebrity Eclipse passing beneath the bridge might have been much smaller than originally calculated. What was initially believed to be 4.1 feet of space may actually have been as little as 13.2 inches once bridge sag and changing water levels were considered.

“There goes our safety margin,” Nielsen said.

A 2025 report from the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the Lewis and Clark Bridge and the Astoria-Megler Bridge are the only structures in the Pacific Northwest classified as “critical/essential” that span waterways regularly used by ocean-going ships while also having an “unknown levels of risk of collapse from a vessel collision.”

A Wall Street Journal investigation the previous year reached a more direct conclusion, identifying the Longview bridge as one of eight bridges nationwide considered especially vulnerable to a collapse similar to the one in Baltimore.

The risk at Longview may be even greater because the bridge lacks protective concrete barriers around its piers that could absorb impacts from ships. However, even with such protections in place, the Baltimore bridge still collapsed when it was struck.

The 2024 disaster in Baltimore began when the container ship Dali experienced a power failure close to the bridge, leaving the crew unable to control the vessel before it collided with a support pier.

The accident killed six people, halted a major shipping route for 11 weeks and led to plans for a replacement bridge estimated to cost around $5 billion.

“If that situation had happened one minute later or one minute sooner, there’s a good chance the bridge wouldn’t have come down,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen and the 45 other Columbia River Pilots frequently reflect on that event, particularly because engine failures occur regularly along the river. On average, about two such failures happen each month somewhere in the system and when propulsion or rudder systems fail, pilots lose control of vessels that can exceed 1,000 feet in length.

“Through the work we do as pilots, we keep those from becoming catastrophes,” Nielsen said. “But we can’t control everything.”

Many of the incidents are brief and resolved quickly, with control returning to the crew within minutes. Each case is reported to and reviewed by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“But it’s the one that occurs right above the bridge or right below the bridge when we’re making our approach on it that is really concerning to us,” Nielsen said. “We will run the ship aground if we have to before we hit that bridge column, because we all know what’s going to happen.”

The early February engine failure occurred near the Port of Longview, directly beside the bridge.