‘It is taking so long to get our lives back’

Residents near Key Bridge site grapple with job loss, evictions

Mary Branch, 87, lives in Turner Station, which is near the Key Bridge, which collapsed in March 2024. She is concerned about the traffic and pollution from the additional trucks that pass through the community. Lloyd Fox/Staff photos

David Jones took a job blocking off lanes of traffic for construction projects like the one being worked by six men who died repairing potholes when the Key Bridge collapsed.

A few days after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on March 26 last year, Nije Edwards lost her job moving packages in the Amazon Fulfillment Center located in the shadow of the 47-year-old span.

With cargo traffic in the Port of Baltimore abruptly halted, there were far fewer packages coming in — and little need for workers like Edwards to move them.

One year later, the 26-year-old single mother of two still hasn’t found another job that will allow her to work around the school schedules of her 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. She just hopes her tax refund check will arrive quickly enough to stave off eviction.

“I’m looking for any way I can find to support my family,” said Edwards, who dreams of someday becoming a nurse. “But I’m not going to give up trying. A lot of other people are in the same situation. Hopefully, once the bridge goes back up, there will be a lot more opportunities for everyone.”

Edwards will have a long wait; construction on the bridge isn’t expected to be completed until October 2028.

In the meantime, residents of Turner Station, Curtis Bay, Dundalk and other neighborhoods near the bridge are chafing at impacts ranging from the inconvenient — traffic congestion and the influx of trucks speeding through residential neighborhoods — to the potentially life-altering: increased pollution and its accompanying health risks, job losses, utility shutoffs and evictions.

And, as is often true of disasters, the people most affected by the bridge’s collapse have fewer resources for getting through tough times than do most state residents.

The Baltimore Metropolitan Council released a report in June estimating that 337,643 people live in the nine communities most impacted by the bridge collapse: Middle River, Essex, Highlandtown, Dundalk, Sparrows Point, Brooklyn, Curtis Bay, Glen Burnie and Pasadena.

According to the report, the combined impact area has a higher poverty rate than either the seven-county Baltimore Metropolitan Statistical Area or the state of Maryland. About 42% of residents in those nine communities live at or below the poverty line, as compared with 31.4% of the population in the Baltimore area and 30.2% of Marylanders.

People in the impacted neighborhoods are on average less educated than their counterparts who live farther from the bridge, the report found.

None of this is news to Muriel Gray, an 80-year-old resident of Turner Station, a historically Black neighborhood founded in the 1880s in Baltimore County by steelworkers facing racially based housing discrimination.

Gray volunteers as an outreach specialist for the nearby St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church, where she helps find temporary shelter for neighbors evicted from their homes.

“On one day in February, I had 15 families who were set out on the street,” Gray said, her mouth tightening in anger at the memory. “That is just ridiculous. There were all these children who had nowhere to go.”

Gray’s friend and Turner Station neighbor, Mary Branch, 87, fears that the kids who remain in these communities also are at risk as they suddenly must dodge heavy traffic on their way to school or while playing in their front yards.

“I drive my 16-year-old great-granddaughter to her high school every morning, and I’m on pins and needles when these big trucks go roaring through,” Branch said.

About 34,000 vehicles crossed the bridge daily in 2022, according to the report. That includes about 4,000 trucks, of which an estimated 1,200 contain hazardous chemicals. All those cars and semis have had to find different routes, and local homeowners say that too often they speed through residential neighborhoods that supposedly are closed to commercial vehicles.

“Curtis Bay is not supposed to be a thoroughfare for truck traffic,” said David Jones, 45, who lives in that Baltimore community.

“It’s disgusting how much my house shakes when trucks drive 70 miles an hour down a 30-mile-an-hour street. A lot of accidents happen because too many people are driving and not paying attention. My biggest fear is I’m going to have a tractor-trailer in my living room one day.”

Residents also worry that the additional vehicle exhaust is spewing pollutants that can make them sick. Diseases associated with air pollution include respiratory problems, stomach ailments and lung cancer.

“A lot of people have developed throat conditions in the past year,” said Gray, who said she has recently begun experiencing bouts of acid reflux. “I’ve never had problems with my throat before. But when I’m outside and inhale, it doesn’t feel right.”

Branch worries about her neighbors’ stress levels.

“You can’t ignore the impact that the destruction of the bridge has had on people’s mental health,” she said. “It is taking so long to get our lives back.”

One of the biggest frustrations: commutes that last twice as long as they did previously.

In 2022, 39.9% of the trips over the bridge during weekdays were work-related, according to the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. The drive between Dundalk in Baltimore County and Ferndale in Anne Arundel County typically was completed in 20 minutes when the bridge was intact. The same trip now averages 41 minutes.

“That bridge surely was a blessing,” Gray said.

Janet Hamilton, 69, is holding out the hope that one day, it will be again.

She has seen the design for what is being touted as Maryland’s first highway cable-stayed bridge with its fan-shaped system of supports. In her opinion, the new span will not only ferry traffic more easily and efficiently than its steel-trussed predecessor, it will be prettier.

“The design of the new bridge is sturdy, and it’s beautiful,” said Hamilton, a board member of the St. Helena Community Association. “I like the way it flows.”

The construction has already begun adding some jobs in an area that, particularly in the past year, has needed them badly.

According to the Baltimore Metropolitan Council report, 24% of the approximately 122,000 jobs in the impacted area in 2022 were in the transportation and warehouse industries — the sectors that ground to a halt overnight when the bridge fell into the Patapsco River.

During a recent workday, Jones was at work on the Key Bridge site, where he is a foreman for a company that closes and opens traffic lanes around construction sites. Recently, he took time off from work to testify in Annapolis on a bill to increase road safety for work crews.

It has not escaped Jones’ attention that for the past 10 months, he has been doing what he describes as “the exact same job as the six men who lost their lives on the Key Bridge.”

The experience, he said, has been eye-opening.

“I have gained a lot of respect for people who do this work,” Jones said. “I think about those six men every day.”

Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at [e-mail] and 410-332-6704.