The Golden Gate Bridge ended up being a line item in a report that came out this week as part of the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into last year's collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and the local media has been freaking out.

The Golden Gate was one of 68 bridges that were listed as in need of assessment in this new NTSB report, titled "Safeguarding Bridges from Vessel Strikes: Need for Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Reduction Strategies."

The report concludes that "The 30 owners of 68 bridges over navigable waterways frequented by ocean-going vessels are likely unaware of their bridges’ risk of catastrophic collapse from a vessel collision and the potential need to implement countermeasures to reduce the bridges’ vulnerability." And the Golden Gate Bridge was listed in an appendix along with six other Bay Area bridges as having "unknown" levels of risk of collapse from a ship collision.

The Bay Bridge was not included, possibly because the navigable, deeper waters of the Bay under the bridge for big ships are confined to the area under the newer eastern span, and bridges built after 1996 are assumed to have lesser risk.

On Friday, as KRON4 reports, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District issued a statement pushing back on this "unknown" risk level and need for assessment, telling the federal agency that it has taken care of its own assessments, and the risk level is low.

"The Golden Gate Bridge has one of the most robust ship collision protection systems of any bridge on the West Coast," the agency said, haughtily, in its statement. "The Golden Gate Bridge main span is 4,200 feet long and is supported by two towers on each end. The North Tower sits half on land and half in water, and a large vessel would run aground before colliding with the pier."

The statement continued saying, "The South tower, which is anchored to bedrock beneath the water, is protected by a concrete fender that extends into the seabed." And that fender, they say, is 27 feet thick at the base and 10 feet thick at sea level.

And, the agency adds, "in light of the tragic Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse," the district hired a consultant earlier this year to fully assess the South tower's fender system's "structural capacity for ship collisions."

Six other Bay Area bridges constructed before 1996, however, including the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and the San Mateo Bridge, could be due for their own risk assessments.

Longer-term Bay Area residents may recall the last major ship accident involving a bridge in the Bay was, indeed, the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which was struck by a ship called the Cosco Busan in 2007 which ended up subsequently spilling 53,000 gallons of oil — actually bunker fuel — into the Bay, causing a major environmental disaster.

But, that rickety old bridge span still survived the crash, and was ultimately demolished between 2014 and 2017.

Related: At Long Last (And Way Over Budget), Suicide Prevention Nets Finally Installed on Golden Gate Bridge

Photo by Tim Foster