This was absolutely horrifying to wake up to: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/francis-scott-key-bridge-baltimore-collapse....
BREAKING: Ship collides with Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse pic.twitter.com/OcOrSjOCRn— BNO News (@BNONews) March 26, 2024
The latest: Two people were rescued from the Patapsco River, one who refused medical attention and another transported in serious condition, Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace says. "This continues to be a search and rescue operation"— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) March 26, 2024
Hopefully there are more survivors.
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Absolutely wild. Cannot remember a bridge collapse that could have this impact on a city and cost as much as this in the past 40-50 years. Saving grace was it was early in the morning with about as little traffic as you could have and it wasn't the tunnel trapping people inside. But this will hamstring Baltimore (even more) for some time.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa immediately came to mind. Aside from the stunning beauty of the new bridge, the thing that I love the most about the engineering of it was the insertion of dolphins around the bridge to protect the pylons/piers. I hope Baltimore will learn lessons from Tampa here.
This bridge did have the concrete walls around it, but nothing is stopping a fully loaded 980ft cargo ship.
One of the bridges between Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsing, what, about 15 or 20 years ago comes to mind as well.
Holy shit, that's bad
Before there's wild speculation, videos are showing that the ship in question lost power twice and basically drifted uncontrolled into the pylon. The crew tried to course correct and save it, as you can see with the black smoke pouring out of the smokestack when they set the engines to full when the power came back on the first time, but the second power outage pretty much guaranteed the collision would happen. You just can't turn ships that large that quickly.
The only consolation here is that it happened at 1:30am instead of rush hour. Still, hoping for the best for everyone involved.
At least two survivors so far. One unhurt.
What's so horrifying is how it just drops in a heartbeat. I went over that bridge with my family like 3 months ago. Wild stuff
Why wasn't a phone call made to get people off of the bridge? They were still in Baltimore, a cell phone would have worked. They didn't need radio. It wasn't moving quickly, the call should have been made on the first power loss.
It was really quick like 2.5 minutes from power loss to bridge strike. No way you'd get a call to emergency services and then have them turn it around to reach the people on the bridge who most were not in vehicles as they were doing concrete repair.
yikes. That is a fine line between disaster and success then.
It was about 2.5 minutes from FIRST loss of power. I'm sure some sort of call was made. But there's no guarantee you are going to actually hit the bridge. They go power back, and tried to correct course. Then lost power again. By that time no call or anything was going to get people off the bridge. Best you can hope is they put a notice up on the message board. The tolls are overhead electronic now, so there's not even a booth or gates to stop traffic. It is part of the interstate system, so free flow.
A radio call is actually faster, MTA did get the call and did shut down the roadway partially keeping a few cars off of it. But it's such a long bridge and such a quick event cars already pay the tolls couldn't be warned in time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkjZImSG7j4
Here is MTA trying to stop all traffic.
Just crazy, imagine being the guy who was about to head up onto the bridge to clear the workers...
Damn quick response and great actions by them.
I am impressed by the lack of f-bombs in that radio traffic.
Those letters to chief and chief to FCC aren't worth it.
Source I've had to write one to my chief at the time.
I'm reasonably impressed that they managed to get traffic stopped that quickly after the mayday from the boat.
I just assumed if they lost all power and couldn't steer the boat the radio was likely jacked up as well.
I would not get on a boat that didn't have a battery-powered radio, at least as a backup.
What about one that doesn't have backup for steering
They do have a back up. Required by SOLAS (International Treaty) to have an Emergency Diesel Generator, this does provide back up power to steering. The EDG is likely what kicked on after the first power loss. The second power loss is troubling tho...
I'd like to give the back up steering a grade of F then.
Steering without propulsion on any boat is pretty much impossible and as far as I've read the back up generator is not designed to be used with any propulsion systems.
Additionally, while the engines stop, with the loss of power, the propellers are still turning, which do, naturally, veer ships in a clockwise direction. The drift to the right was inevitable. A matter of mere moments and the collision would not have happened.
You cannot steer a boat without any propulsion unfortunately. Terrible luck but there wasn't a ton the crew could do besides call for mayday.
Well aware.
maybe the better question is why didn't they drop anchors as soon as they lost power?
Because they were busy trying to get the power back on. Which they did. Conflicting efforts.
I guess hindsight is 20/20 but what are the risks associated with putting effort into dropping anchors vs working to regain power?
Unless it's reasonable to assume that anchors wouldn't stop the ship, I would think dropping anchors and hoping it stops the ship is less risky than trying to fix a problem that you have no idea how long will take to fix and working against a clock to get it done before the ship goes so far off course that it rams into a f*ing bridge.
In my mind, power is lost immediately equals stop the ship any way you can and then figure out how to regain sustainable power and correct course.
Like, if you're driving on the highway and then your engine shuts off you're not going to climb out the window while the car is coasting at 70ish mph and try to pop the hood and get the engine restarted while the car is flying down the freeway. You're going to apply brakes, come to a stop, AND THEN work on fixing the engine. Why would this be any different on a ship?
They did drop at least the port side anchor and the chain is pulled away which means it drug on the bottom but there was just too much momentum.
from this article. It's unclear when the anchor was dropped, though. Did they drop it immediately when they lost power, or a couple minutes later when they realized they were heading straight at a bridge support? Does that make a difference?
I don't know how many anchors the ship has (I have to assume at least two). Would dropping both (all?) anchors immediately after losing power be enough to stop the ship from hitting the bridge? To HITW's point, would dropping anchors at the speed they were travelling be so jarring that it would damage the ship or cargo (which, apparently, some of the cargo was hazardous waste?)
I think these are fair questions to ask. I don't know the answers, obviously. I think it will be interesting to see what the investigation of this uncovers.
01:24:59 a.m.: Numerous audible alarms were recorded on the ship's bridge audio. At about the same time, the VDR stopped recording ship system data but was able to keep recording audio using a different power source.
01:26:02 a.m.: The VDR resumed recording ship system data. During this time, steering commands and orders regarding the rudder were captured on audio.
01:26:39 a.m.: The ship's pilot made a general very high frequency (VHF) radio call for tugboats in the vicinity to help the vessel. Around this time, the pilot association dispatcher contacted the Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer about the blackout, according to transit authority data.
Around 01:27:04 a.m.: The pilot ordered that the ship's port anchor be dropped and issued additional steering commands.
yes, I saw this article after I made the post you responded to.
My FIL said he saw some interviews with other captains that were critical of the crash because they didn't drop anchors as soon as power was lost. In a vacuum that sort of made sense to me at the time and I ran with that question here on TKP. As more info comes out it seems that dropping anchors a)did happen and b) probably wouldn't have made a significant difference anyway. I thought it was a fair question to ask. I learned some things from asking the question.
Dropping anchor is the equivalent of pulling the parking break while doing 70. Not ideal. It's not slowly coming to a stop under normal brakes or efforts.
valid point. We don't know how fast the ship was travelling or how jarring it would be (or how effective) to stop a ship that size with anchors. Even so, I think anything you can do to lessen the impact to the bridge would be beneficial. If you're traveling at 70 and only have the handbrake to use to stop the vehicle and it's barreling towards a structure would you still pull the brake to limit the impact, or would you just throw your hands up, accept your fate and brace for impact?
There's also the current, the propeller still moving, wind (there's a large side profile on a stacked ship), and momentum moving that thing around while moving towards its final destination. The opening between supports isn't tight...like not 2 ship widths wide. There was space. It wasn't imminent that they would ram the bridge support. Heck, in over 50 years it had never happened previously and this isn't the first ship to go through there.
I just saw a new article where the NTSB investigators have an initial timeline of events. Power loss at 01:24:59 and the order from the pilot to drop anchor occurred about two minutes later at 01:27:04. At 01:29 the ships over ground speed was recorded at 8 mph when it struck the bridge support. Would dropping both anchors two minutes earlier have actually stopped the ship? I have my doubts but who knows?
Would dropping the anchors when the ship lost power the first time fit within the protocol of what to do in that event?
https://www.skuld.com/topics/ship/safety/good-anchoring-practice/#:~:text=Sternway%20speed%3A%20the%20speed%20over,0.25%20to%200.5%20knots%20only.
Basically, ship should be below 1 knot for safe deployment. But there's a lot of other factors and scenarios that could occur as well.
yes, we wouldn't want to have excessive strain on the chain...when the alternative is taking out an interstate bridge.
Yup, because that was the intent all along.
not saying the intent was anything, it just seems odd that you would refer to best practices that are clearly designed for long term health of the anchor system when it's an emergency where I'd expect everyone to pull out all the stops.
Tangentially related story: I know a guy who was on a panel doing a safety audit of Fukushima power plant when the tsunami hit. He was remote, but literally on a conference call with the authorities at the plant when it happened. He and the other guys on the panel recommended calling in a coast guard pumper ship and just dowsing the reactor with sea water to keep temperatures down to avoid the total meltdown. Procedure dictated that the authorities at the plant get authorization from Tokyo for that, which took over a day of paperwork. By the time they really got moving on addressing the issue, it was too late. My coworker said "if that plant had been an American plant, they wouldn't have lost the reactor. Instead, it's the 3rd largest nuclear power disaster ever."
I guess what I'm saying is, even if the anchor gets ripped off, it's better than what did happen and you could at least say you tried. Now, I realize it is really likely that the anchor fails horribly, maybe even rips a chunk out of the side of the ship and that could cause some to pause, but here we are on the other side questioning if they did everything they could to avoid the bridge...not just everything they "should" by procedure.
That's not what I'm addressing, and posting so anyone can see that there guidelines for speed and we know the speed of the ship when it lost power. And that isn't THE only thing that those guidelines take into account. When the chain breaks, what occurs? When the anchor drags, what does it grab/dislodge/stir up/move from it's current resting place/issues does it cause/damage to ship when it drags or breaks? If it does grab, what happens to the cargo/people on board/ship when it gets turned-snatched, around? Those guidelines are to ensure safety for everything involved. Oh, and it's not like they can abuse the anchor system and just go get a new one like they got a nail in their tire...Care needs to be taken so it will remain functional for the expected life span.
I guess what I'm saying is the anchor would have been ripped off. When it's advised that the net speed be under 1 know and it was moving at nearly 9 knots, it's not a "let's see what happens" strategy, at least first. If it's coasting and slowing, then maybe yes. And in the hierarchy of everything trying to get the 1000' long ship back under power, I'm sure it's not number 1. They notified the bridge authorities and nearly everyone was stopped from traveling on the bridge. Then they tried to regain power. When they lost it, the foregone conclusion wasn't that it would absolutely hit the bridge. They were trying to save the ship from several different scenarios. They followed the protocol set forth. And I'll guess that when all is said and done, and that protocol is reviewed/revised, dropping anchor at 9 knots is not going to be a strategy that ends up in the book.
dropping anchor while the ship is moving at X speed would result in a jarring rapid deceleration. The anchor system (how it attaches, etc) is probably only designed to be dropped while the ship is moving at Y speed and I'm guessing X>Y. I'm once again guessing that they tried using the rudder and getting the power back on for a course correction, which was what they were trained to do in the event of an outage.
Maybe an actual sea vessel architect could shed some light?
Well, the boat is moving, and if moving faster than the current, the rudder should steer the boat.
Plan A would be to steer the boat. Dropping anchor under speed would be a desperate last resort with unpredictable results in order to reduce (and likely not prevent) the impact.
What they needed was a tug escort. Some harbors require that, and for good reason, hindsight being 20/20.
With ships this size the anchor does relatively little in stopping it/holding it in place. It's the weight of the chain that keeps a ship from moving and it's highly unlikely you can pay out enough chain in two minutes to stop a ship that was stationary let alone underway.
I'm not an expert, but I have some experience with small boats, and I think there were several factors at work here. First, the prop would likely still have been turning from momentum, and it turns in a clockwise direction. That would have the effect of causing the ship to drift to starboard - towards the bridge support. Second, without power, as others have said, the rudder would have been mostly ineffective regardless of the fact that the ship still had forward momentum. I'm going to assume that the pilot knew that dropping both anchors would not stop a ship of that size and weight in time, so he dropped his port anchor hoping that it would pull the ship to port and away from the bridge support. It's like being in a kayak and holding your paddle in the water on the left/port side of the kayak. It causes the boat to slow on that side and turn in that direction. Unfortunately, there was just too much momentum on a ship that size, so the emergency action of dropping the port anchor didn't work.
Horrible thing to wake up to. One of the most haunting things in the footage is the number of cars that pass as the ship approaches and they were 2 or so minutes away from being caught in that. They were likely completely unaware of what was going on, like those that were unfortunately still on the bridge as it collapsed.
As stated, hopefully more of passengers in cars and anyone else on the bridge that wasn't so lucky will have survived.
We were going to drive over it this morning driving to Philly as my kids love going over it. Taking an entirely different route now.
Thank god you didn't get stuck on there.
Glad your timing kept you off the bridge when this happened.
Also...go to Gooey Louies for cheesteaks.
Or John's Roast Pork for cheesesteaks.
Just don't go to Cheesesteak Vegas.
First meal is at Reading terminal. Got a Spicy Jalapeño corn dog and Spicy Habanero cheese curds.
Make sure you eat some fiber.
Good Man!!! RTM is the joint.
Going to see this exhibit tomorrow
Saw this at the Franklin Institute (Philly) a few years back. REALLY impressive exhibition.
Dude, nice.
Highly recommend it. The exhibit was great and if you have kids the rest of the institute is a full day trip. We were there from 930 to 430. Only missed one of the planetarium shows. They currently have exhibits about the human brain, the heart, electricity(this was my kids favorite area as it had ways to shock yourself), sports, space, air power with a jet plane and Wright Brothers plane, a machines section with hands on machines for the kids, and a motion lab that had a bunch of hands on stuff teaching about momentum, optical illusions, fulcrums.
They have a dining facility on site too.
Couple of my favorites
Man, that second one is pretty dark.
There were about 55 different builds total in the exhibit.
Already started trying to plan a trip there with the wife! This was just what I needed man, thanks!
That looked horrible. We are visiting D.C. next week for vacation and might have been going over it. Only thing that is "good" is that it was when few were on the road. Bad is bad, but could have been even worse. Thoughts and prayers to all those impacted.
Baltimore Fire and EMS reports one person "rescued" refused medical care, signed the refusal and left. Not sure how the hell that guy has balls that big.
"It was just a bridge collapse, don't be a baby"
-That guy, probably
"I can't afford any medical bills right now"
- That guy, probably
Missing out on some extra lawsuit money though.
There'll be 104, 872 people that were on that bridge by the time the Bmore lawyers file.
You are talking about the city that probably has more lawyers for capita than any other.
They were all thinking about getting on that bridge, so they will be involved in the lawsuit.
This.
I've been procrastinating on buying window breakers for our cars. Made that purchase today after watching this.
From what I've read, modern car windows render many of those glass breakers ineffective. There have been a number of articles about this after the sister of former Transportation secretary Elaine Chao died when her Tesla went into a lake and she was trapped.
Better to have it and at least have the chance, right?
if you know, you know...
Experts weigh in!
How large would the protection have to be to stop a 100 thousand ton cargo ship the size of 3 football fields?
If you asked my structural engineers, just multiply those two quantities by eleventy billion.
Process Mechanical engineer checking in, can confirm the Structural EoR added another layer of conservatism.
I tell my engineering clients I am paid to be paranoid about civil engineering designs.
paranoid about
civil engineeringarchitectural "designs"ftfy
Man in my line of work I wish we actually had Architectural designs. Hard for me to get an Architect to produce something aesthetically pleasing when they're working on wastewater plants or pump stations though.
I agree with that...but this doesn't do it for you?
Oh yeah, Back River's egg shaped digesters are awesome. I've been up there once but did not get the chance to check them out up close. Snapped pictures from a distance though, obviously.
I knew I'd seen this somewhere...
I see these all the time. The San Onofree Nuclear Boobies on I-5 within Camp Pendleton, between Orange County and San Diego County. Although decommissioned, the glorious structures remain in prominent view for anyone driving between San Diego and Los Angeles. The view is actually pretty great, as you drive by the ocean and on a clear day, you have a great view of Catalina Island.
I grew up in Lynchburg, and we used to call the LU vine center "Jerry's nipple"
Georgia Tech's Alexander Memorial Colosseum back in the day.
And today. It grew an underwire.
I surfed San Onofre Beach and Lower Trestles - which is just North of that - and those are visible from both lineups. Waves are good there.
That is my job, water and sewer.
I used to design boxes around water and waste water stuff. I can only recall one project where anyone really asked us to make it look nice. But, it was right beside a major highway.
Article written by Holly Ramer.
Nope, no irony there
Ramer? I hardly know her!
I have a feeling that the only thing stopping that cargo ship would have been another pier with a bridge section that falls on top of it. No way the "dolphins" they installed in front of the bridge in Tampa after their incident would have stopped this cargo ship.
"In other news, Professor Roberto Leon of Virginia Tech, having recently been identified as an expert in the field of civil and environmental engineering, has accepted a similar position at the University of Kentucky. Sources tell this reporter that Kentucky offered Leon an annual salary that triples his salary from Virginia Tech. Neither Kentucky nor Leon has responded to requests for clarifying information as of the time of publication, but public affairs officials at Kentucky have scheduled a press conference for 1:00pm tomorrow afternoon."
Yes, I'm still salty.
Sigh, this is an underrated tweet
Too soon.
Maybe I'm uptight but a suicide joke about sports at the expense of a fatal tragedy that happened the same day isn't really underrated
Yeah, this is a KMart brand Anthony Jeselnik tweet.
I don't believe in too soon or topics being off limits, but you have to first be funny and I'm not sure this really meets the bar for me.