Maryland’s ‘rainy day fund’ used for small busi­ness­es hit by Bal­ti­more bridge col­lapse

The Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion said it received 500 loan appli­ca­tions after Baltimore’s Fran­cis Scott Key Bridge col­lapsed last week.
The funds could be dis­trib­uted in two weeks to sup­port small busi­ness­es that are out of oper­a­tion as the Port of Bal­ti­more remains closed. Bal­ti­more is home to about 50,000 small busi­ness­es, employ­ing 500,000 peo­ple. 
“The imme­di­ate impact [of the bridge col­lapse] has real­ly been felt by those sup­ply chain, logis­tics and trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies that real­ly focus their busi­ness­es on the port and the activ­i­ty that was hap­pen­ing at the port,” Isabel Casil­las Guz­man, SBA admin­is­tra­tor, told Forbes. 
The SBA has dis­trib­uted sim­i­lar loans in times of unex­pect­ed dis­as­trous sit­u­a­tions. In 2005, 140,000 loans were giv­en to small busi­ness­es affect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for­gave 95% of those loans.
The Mary­land Sen­ate also unan­i­mous …