When a Singapore-flagged container ship struck the Francis Scott Key bridge in Maryland in the early hours of March 26, the U.S. Coast Guard became one of several federal agencies mobilized to close the Port of Baltimore waterway, initiate search-and-rescue and begin clearing tons of wreckage and debris.
That could not be done without tremendous resources, from an already lean force that experts say has been underfunded for much of its modern history.
On the scene were four Coast Guard cutters, at least 10 boats, 36 barges, 27 tugboats, 22 floating cranes, 10 excavators, one dredger and one skimmer. Then, there is the massive number of hands manning these vessels and tools, including 27 Coast Guard civilians, 23 volunteers, 275 active duty service members and 82 reservists, said Nick Ameen, a spokesperson for the joint information center on the response.
These employees have been drawn from their home stations all over the country, including some as far as Alaska and California. That also means these stations are donating staff to the recovery effort in Maryland, and the Coast Guard’s operations lead said the service doesn’t have much to spare as it is.
“There’s an immediate-area impact to readiness, certainly, but what we know is that for unplanned incidents like this where we mobilize a lot very quickly, there are also readiness impacts that happen well beyond the initial site,” said Vice Adm. Peter Gautier, deputy commandant for operations of the Coast Guard, in a hearing on the bridge incident on May 15.
“Going into what’s likely to be a pretty severe hurricane season, I think the main thing here is that in order for the Coast Guard to reconstitute and be ready for the next [emergency], we need to have continued and enduring financial appropriations [from] Congress,” he added.
The strain is evidenced in steps the Coast Guard is already evaluating to flag certain regions for potential consolidation. Other units, including stations in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, have been identified for temporary closure of boat operations.
Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said the Coast Guard is a “Swiss Army knife” agency with a diverse array of statutory authorities that give it much to do in civilian and military spheres.
“The regulatory environment that affords them a lot of activities and leniency is … all compiled in a single agency, and they have a very small workforce,” he said in an interview. “On a normal day, they operate at that level of capacity. They don’t have any surcharge capacity [for when things get] worse. Now, you have something like the bridge incident, and you will be sucking down … a big percentage of resources for that area.”
The Coast Guard’s is not even the largest sub-agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security. Its force of 57,000 active duty, reserve, and civilian personnel falls just below that of Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration. Yet experts and officials within the service have pointed out the far-reaching and diverse duties its charged with: drug interdiction, immigration, environmental protection, emergency response, waterway and coastal security, intelligence and defense. It is regulatory, law enforcing and military. It works over 3.4 million square miles of Exclusive Economic Zones and defends a coastline that is longer, by most estimates, than the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
In the next decade, the Guard will be faced with the same emerging challenges looming over everything else: cyber attacks, submersibles in the drug trade, climate change and worsening natural disasters, unpredictable international conflict and manpower shortages. The good news, Nieto-Gomez said, is that the Coast Guard has most of the actual authorities it needs to be able to respond to these emerging dangers, with some exceptions.
“There is a difference between being having the statutory authority or having the capability,” he said.
For fiscal year 2025, the Coast Guard requested $12.3 billion, which includes a plan for overhauling the personnel staffing system that undergirds its HR. The service already rolled out a plan for a permanent recruiting specialty for enlisted members, matching what other military branches have. Still, the recent collision affecting the Key bridge shows disasters don’t wait for funding or readiness to be where they need to be.
“This incident unfortunately comes at a time of strained resources and a 10% workforce shortage,” said Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., during the hearing.
Gauthier said the force has already spent about $20 million in direct and indirect incident costs, and there’s “no guarantee over time” that the Coast Guard will be able to perform at this level without support from Congress for things like more aids-to-navigation and cutter modernization, or recapitalization.
Earlier this month, a cutter returned from a counternarcotics deployment in the eastern Pacific Ocean where it was patrolling more than 12,000 nautical miles — roughly the size of five spans of the continental U.S.
Nieto-Gomez said he was once told that this breadth of work is like patrolling the state of Kansas with a single police car.
“Now, you take them and you move them to a bridge that needs to be dealt with, and you are pulling metal and you have a ship that’s still stuck there with a crew that remains on board … [there] was already a limited workforce to do a very important job that needs to be done,” he said. “And frankly, it’s very possible that nobody else can do it.”
Congress has shown its intent to take action. The House cleared a bill on May 14 to authorize $12 million to fund recruiters and offices for the Coast Guard Recruiting Command and an additional $9 million for recruiting capability in fiscal 2025. That passed in a 376-16 vote.
The bill also aims to improve quality of life for Coast Guard service members, a factor that, like pay competitiveness and work-life balance, may give the private sector an edge.
“While the service is cautiously optimistic regarding FY 2024 recruiting efforts, we must continue to generate more awareness of the Coast Guard’s value to the nation, message the benefits of military service and identify more candidates for potential recruitment,” said Deputy Commandant for Mission Support, Vice Adm. Paul Thomas, on May 6 before lawmakers.
Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
