COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The University of Maryland hosted some of the country’s top transit and infrastructure minds as they worked to answer one of biggest questions of the year: What lessons has the Key Bridge disaster taught us?
The cap and gowns roaming campus signaled school is out in College Park. But, inside the Edward St. John Learning & Teaching Center, the class on the Key Bridge disaster and fallout is in session.
WUSA9 found Prince George’s County Del. Jamila Woods among the dozens of active eyes and ears tuned into the lectures.
“I don’t’ know what I expected to hear today,” she said. “I just know that I’m so excited. I wanted to be here because I wanted to hear from the people who know about (infrastructure).”
“We have the top minds of transportation in this room,” said Dr. Nii Attoh-Okine, chair of the University of Maryland’s engineering school.
Okine helped pull the experts together to have a roundtable discussion on the Key Bridge disaster.
“We have to look 10 steps ahead at that ‘what if’ scenario so that in case we have an accident, it won't affect us both economically and in other aspects,” he said.
For several hours, the nation’s engineering experts from universities across the country and federal agencies took the microphone to talk about everything from bridge and infrastructure design to maritime and climate issues, to some facets you might not have thought about.
“They talked about communication systems,” Del. Woods said. “And I thought, ‘we need to have more relevant communication systems [when disasters like the Key Bridge happen].”
Dr. Attoh-Okine says he wants to see session’s information create a guiding document for engineering in the future.
For Delegate Woods says she’s ready to take the information and have the state of Maryland graduate to real world solutions.
“I wanna start the balls rolling as to what do we do in the future,” she said.