Baltimore Bridge Collision

[16vCento]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... ey-updates

Unbelievable how it just falls down

Bit odd how it manages to hit the bridge right at the support.

[dinny_g]

Putin'll be blaming the Ukrainians...

It's pretty shocking footage to be fair - how long after the impact did the bridge collapse ?? I suppose it's fortunate it happened at 01:30 in the morning when traffic is lighter..

[16vCento]

It looked almost instantaneous as it hit, suggestions the ship lost power which is why it drifted into the bridge.

Scary how fast that happened.

[V8Granite]

It will be interesting to hear how long it was a black ship for, so no power at all.

Thrusters and things can still be available if a crew knows what it’s doing and the main engine is gone.

Dave!

[dinny_g]

What's the weight of something like that Dave - 100k tonnes and more ?

Even drifting slowly, that's a hell of a force on the bridge and once it starts to go, all structural integrity is gone and it will always be a total collapse.

I wonder was there any sort of warning from the Ship bridge ?

[V8Granite]

Absolutely no idea, they do take a lot of stopping

Dave!

[mik]

What's the weight of something like that Dave - 100k tonnes and more ?

Wiki say “The general weight of an average-sized cargo ship is somewhere around 165,000 tons, while smaller vessels weigh about 50,000 tons and larger vessels approximately 220,000 tons.“

Sheesh - imagine how heavy the EV ones will be?

Footage is scary, but yeah - bridges are pretty fragile in the grand scheme of things.

[Beany]

Open data suggest it was dead in the water for just a few minutes, and in that time, drifted into the bridge.

What caused this incident is still unclear, but BBC Verify has been looking at video of the collision and the Dali's travel history on ship tracking platform MarineTraffic.

The container ship set off from Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal at around 00:24 local time (04:24 GMT) on 26 March.

Its speed steadily increased and it maintained a straight route south east along the Patapsco River.

Then at 01:25 MarineTraffic data shows that the ship suddenly diverted from its straight course and began to slow down.

Around this time, video shows that all lights on the exterior of the ship suddenly turned off and smoke began emanating from the ship's funnel.

The Dali then hit a portion of the bridge at 01:28, causing it to collapse.

Clicky

[Barry]

My mate left the job a couple years back, diagnosed with Complex PTSD and anxiety. Stressful job that, I do feel for everyone involved. Modern ships are parred down to worrying levels, single screw, no bow thrusters, all in the name of efficiency/emissions. He's had concerns over the automation of systems for years, if the system fails, they're dead in the water.

[V8Granite]

I’ve been on anchor handlers which go from blackout to back up and running within a minute or so to crews who simply didn’t know how to do it and dropped anchor instead of hitting the fjord.

Good Chief Engineers are worth their weight in gold.

Dave!

[mik]

Two consecutive power losses apparently.

(note - don't get too deep into the comments as it's filling up with 'Mercun conspiracy theorists. "This looks deliberate". "They KILLED the bow lights to further mask the approach" etc etc )

[duncs500]

Surprised there isn't a pilot when pulling out under a bridge like that TBH.

[Beany]

Surprised there isn't a pilot when pulling out under a bridge like that TBH.

I mean, they radio'd in a mayday saying they'd lost control of the vessel - you can have a dozen pilots, if you can't control it and you're at the whim of the currents, you're basically fucked regardless.

[duncs500]

Surprised there isn't a pilot when pulling out under a bridge like that TBH.

I mean, they radio'd in a mayday saying they'd lost control of the vessel - you can have a dozen pilots, if you can't control it and you're at the whim of the currents, you're basically fucked regardless.

I meant a pilot/tug, so 12 of them would definitely have helped... and just one may well have been able to prevent it.

[mik]

you can have a dozen pilots, if you can't control it and you're at the whim of the currents

I'm confident @IanF could have averted this.

I read elsewhere that there would indeed have been a pilot on-board for this section.

[duncs500]

When I was working on the Thames, the PLA would insist on tug escorts for anything of any sort of size, and actually insisted there was some pulling capacity on site even when we had fully spudded barges without secondary moorings.

Maybe there just isn't the funds for it in heavily trafficked commercial shipping lanes even when there is bridges, but then you always run the risk of something like this happening. I wouldn't want to be the guy who signed off that risk assessment.

[duncs500]

you can have a dozen pilots, if you can't control it and you're at the whim of the currents

I'm confident @IanF could have averted this.

I read elsewhere that there would indeed have been a pilot on-board for this section.

I meant an escort tug, sorry, we always just used to call it the pilot, but that's clearly not a common terminology.

[Barry]

Pilot usually boards the ship and takes control for leaving/entering port. Word is they had two on board.

As above though, if power goes off you're left with whatever old school methods you can muster, like crash drop anchor.

[IanF]

[nuttinnew]

It looks like it takes ~45s to cross the bridge and the last vehicle across cleared it ~30s before the impact

R.i.p. road workers