No matter what somebody tries to tell you, the Francis Scott Key Bridge didn’t collapse due to a terrorist cyberattack, dynamite explosion, Mitch McConnell’s late sister-in-law or affirmative action.

Early reports indicate that the cargo ship colliding with the bridge, which sent a half-dozen construction workers missing and most of the bridge into the Patapsco River, was most likely an accident. Authorities are awaiting test results from the shipping vessel’s version of an airplane’s black box.

Preliminary guesstimates say replacing the 1.6-mile long bridge along Interstate-695 will cost between $400 million and $800 million and take at least a year-and-a-half.

(Personally, having covered numerous large-scale infrastructure projects in multiple states, I’d be shocked if it was a penny under $1 billion and got done before the 2026 midterms.)

The final price tag and construction timeline will ultimately include everything from the fluctuating price of rebar and steel bolts, the speed and efficiency of legally mandated environmental and other regulatory reviews and the severity of Maryland winters and other weather-related factors.

But, above all, it’ll be politics.

‘Let’s actually building something’

Baltimore’s Key bridge collapse, as tragic as it is, provides a perfect storm for making political and partisan hay.

The mayor and city administration of Baltimore (which don’t operate the port or bridges, not that it matters to the trolls throwing around DEI as an epithet), the governor of Maryland (whose name percolates around lists of future presidential contenders) and the president are all Democrats.

Expect to see that photo of a smiling President Biden and Gov. Wes Moore flanking the young be-Afroed Mayor Brandon Scott in a GOP attack ad sometime soon.

Republican South Carolina U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace fired an early salvo on Newsmax accusing the federal government of wasting taxpayer money instead of using it for projects like the Baltimore bridge.

“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,” Mace said, referring to the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.

A few things are worth noting here:

The first is that the nearly 50-year-old Key Bridge was most recently rated as being in fair condition before a massive container ship rammed into it.

Secondly, the immediate past governor was Republican Larry Hogan who called for bigger ships to be allowed into Baltimore’s port.

The third is that Mace, along with dozens of other House Republicans voted against the infrastructure bill, Mace saying at the time, “If we’re going to do infrastructure, then let’s actually build something.”

Democrats think they have their own trump card. Since last summer, Biden and his surrogates have been roasting Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor of the House but brag about the cash infusion in their districts back home. The legislation also contains more than $100 million for repairs to the beleaguered water system in Jackson, Miss., and removing lead pipes in Chicago — both signals to Black voters that Biden is following through on promises to invest in African American communities.

Biden supporters might want to cover their ears for this part, but the White House likely won’t get the credit it wants for kickstarting some 40,000 local public-works projects across the country. Even with funding in place, local infrastructure projects are rarely completed quickly and, in the meantime, cause traffic headaches that stokes resentment toward elected officials. Many people don’t even know which governmental entities are responsible for repairs (e.g. cities, like Baltimore, generally aren’t responsible for ports and interstate bridges).

Plus, with the presidential election coming up, some projects could be slow walked to await the outcome. Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans now serving as Biden’s infrastructure czar said Republicans who opposed the infrastructure bill might want to roll back funding should Donald Trump win re-election

“This whole thing could get thrown out of the window if somebody else was sitting over there [in the White House] and decides, ‘We don’t want to do it,’” Landrieu told the AP last fall.

Data points were made

What happens when a boat hits a bridge? The answer to that question depends on your favorite conspiracy theory or the scale of the ship, the bridge and collision in question. Below are a few statistics that provide us with some sense of the scale of the tragedy that happened last week.

— Reckon’s climate reporter Chris Harress calculated that the MV Dali, the ship that sank the bridge and weighed roughly 100,000 metric tons is about equal to the weight of about 10 Eiffel Towers. Sign up for Chris’ newsletter The Meltdown to nerd out on esoterica every week.

—Keeping with the Eiffel Tower theme, if stood upright, the Dali would be nearly as tall as la dame de fer

—Put another way: the ship’s length of 984 feet is about two-thirds the height of the Empire State Building (1,454 ft). The Dali is longer than the St. Louis Arch (630 ft.), Statue of Liberty (305 ft.) and the Washington Monument (550 ft.) are tall

The New York Times estimated that the Dali struck the Key with a force of 100 newtons, which by comparison looks like this:

—230 newtons: The force that would be required to slow a USS Gerald R Ford Class (CVN-78) aircraft carrier, the largest in the world, in two seconds. (Apparently the Dali and a Gerald Ford battleship without cargo and crew weigh about the same.)

—110 million newtons: The Earth’s gravitational force on 100 female blue whales

—35 million newtons: Saturn V’s rocket thrust when the shuttle launched in 1967, enough to power 85 Hoover Dams

—1 million newtons: A loaded 18-wheel tractor trailer going 80 mph colliding with a stationary object

Lastly: why is there so little reporting about a partial collapse of the Pacific Coast Highway in California? No one was injured, thankfully, but about 2,000 people were stranded before they could get out of Big Sur Monday morning. Authorities didn’t say what caused the portion of the scenic highway to fall into the ocean but the area had been hard hit with rain. Check out the Times’ story. We’ll be following for updates and await the political finger-pointing.