Baltimore Bridge Down

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

 

When we look at the actual time lines, there was insufficient time to do anything more than what was done to get the bridge approaches closed to any additional traffic.

 

I also notice our attending Maritime and Marine Engineers coupled with our ever knowledgeable Civil Engineers are all right on top of what is required to change the track of 130,000 Tons let alone to even attempt to stop that much Mass in Motion.  There are no existing Dolphins capable of stopping that kind of mass.  It's physics ya know. 

[Cypress Sun]

20 hours ago, Colorado Coffinmaker said:

 

When we look at the actual time lines, there was insufficient time to do anything more than what was done to get the bridge approaches closed to any additional traffic.

 

I also notice our attending Maritime and Marine Engineers coupled with our ever knowledgeable Civil Engineers are all right on top of what is required to change the track of 130,000 Tons let alone to even attempt to stop that much Mass in Motion.  There are no existing Dolphins capable of stopping that kind of mass.  It's physics ya know. 

 

The ship stopped upon striking the bridge. Perhaps if the bridge would have been protected by structures and cushion provided as the picture below shows, this may have been prevented.

 

[Cypress Sun]

20 hours ago, Chantry said:

 

I understand about the dolphins, but were/are they designed to stop a ship the size of Dali?

 

I have doubts about the tugs, I'm not sure there would have been enough time or distance for the tugs to prevent the accident  I also wonder how much the wind and tide may have affected what happened.

 

I don't know if they were designed that way or not, I'm not a civil engineer. One thing for sure, they couldn't have hurt.

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

 

Well Gee Cypress, I appreciate the compliment!!  I do pay attention to physics I do.  I would like to point out however, the particular "Dolphins" you reference while quite robust, are positioned directly in front of the bridge supports.  The Dali, unfortunately,  arrived at the bridge at an angle, out of the channel, and would have by-passed your specific Dolphins.

 

I think (speculation/opinion) one of the largest problems with the Baltimore Bridge and well as many others, is the shipping channel is quite narrow which invites disaster.  Never underestimate MURPHY!!   Drive anything, the size and mass of a loaded Container Ship into bridge supports, you're gonna bring it down.  Oh, and just as Tid Bit of trivia, 99 percent of the Super Size Container Ships and Super Tankers are Single Engine/Single Screw vessels.  About  as maneuverable as a Brick guided by an Ant.   Profit above all else ya know.

[Blackwater 53393]

Regardless of the factors involved in the collision and what could/should have been done, what needs to happen NOW is get the wreckage cleared, the channel opened, and resume shipping operations!

 

There will be ample time and opportunity for further investigation, analysis, and sadly, finger pointing, recrimination, and denial of any and all responsibility!

 

Get what needs to be done to resume commerce and navigation now and then do whatever is needed to prevent it from happening again!!

[watab kid]

15 hours ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

There is no way that the road repair crew could have had time to drop what they were doing, get in their vehicles, start them up and clear the bridge...not even if they were the one's to have received the MAYDAY. In the video, posted by Joe, from the time that the lights go out on the time it hits the bridge is 43 seconds (mol).

I really don't believe that they were able to stop traffic that fast and probably only stopped traffic immediately after the collapse.

 

Although tragic, a bunch of luck happened during this event.

- The fact that it was 1:30 am meant that traffic was virtually non-existent, would have been a different story at 8:00 am with the bridge full of work commuters.

- Two vehicles missed the collapse by a mere 10 seconds. They will forever be glad that they didn't catch that stop light, or whatever...but will always wonder what would have happened if they did.

- The area where the workers were collapsed in a kind of slow motion. I believe that this is what allowed the two survivors to live. The impact of the 185' fall was "cushioned" by the domino effect of the collapse.

- Law enforcement was apparently nearby and closed the bridge off before anyone else drove off the land portion of the bridge into the water or embankment.

 

 

I believe that there will be some new bridge protection requirements proposed in the very near future. Dolphin type protection of the main piers on either side of the shipping channel will probably become a required retrofit. They might even require large ships to have tug assistance through areas with bridges that must be traveled under to get to port. None of it will be cheap and ultimately the taxpayer and/or the consumer will be the one paying for it.

  

as always , the unfolding information expands the facts over the speculation , it seems that bridges construction had inherent safety issues - it was such that impact anywhere would result in total collapse , or so the NTSA indicated this evening , t also was lacking the redundancy of safety design that newer structures have , im sure we will hear more as the investigation continues , 

 

but this was definitely different than the I-35 bridge failure here was a while back , 

 

sadly the search is now called recovery , those construction workers had no chance 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

That bridge is 11 miles long.

was anyway

Francis Scott Key Bridge

Bridge in Maryland

 

Location: Interstate 695 Trending

Opened: March 23, 1977

Construction started: August 1972

Total length: 57,546′

Clearance below: 185′

Longest span: 1,201′

Design: Steel arch-shaped continuous through truss bridge

 

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

38 minutes ago, watab kid said:

it seems that bridges construction had inherent safety issues

 

From what I  understand the talking heads saying about cantilever bridges  a failure of any section with bring the whole thing down.  And bridges aren't designed to carry much lateral load.

[Dantankerous]

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

From what I  understand the talking heads saying about cantilever bridges  a failure of any section with bring the whole thing down.  And bridges aren't designed to carry much lateral load.

And with this information terrorists now have almost precise information of how to replicate this disaster into something much worse.

[watab kid]

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

From what I  understand the talking heads saying about cantilever bridges  a failure of any section with bring the whole thing down.  And bridges aren't designed to carry much lateral load.

that's what i heard as well , im not a structural engineer that ever designed bridge spans , ill not pretend to understand all the intricacies or these safety redundancies they spoke of , im just really sad for those that lost their lives at this point and their families , 

it strikes me that with the described spans between the abutments that vessel could have missed them , this starts other thinking of intent but so far they are saying thats not the case , ill go with that for now , but there are very few coincidences in this world really , ill wait and listen and evaluate what i hear ,  

[watab kid]

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

From what I  understand the talking heads saying about cantilever bridges  a failure of any section with bring the whole thing down.  And bridges aren't designed to carry much lateral load.

my understanding as well , but in so many ways the conditions were such that there was ample room to clear it , i guess we will have to see how it plays out but i have a lot of questions at this point , 

 

thiws is going to shut down the largest port on the east coast for an extended period , that will affect the economy which is already in a bit of a problem , it will also raise more issues on the condition of other older infrastructure [thats been a biden spending spree] im all for fixing before its broken in this area but as we all know government spending is not always focused on what needs doing as much as where votes come from , ..........just sayin ............dont be fooled by the next spending spree n infrasturcture 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Rebuild the bridge: yes!

relocate the shipping terminal: yes!

[Subdeacon Joe]

5 hours ago, Dantankerous said:

And with this information terrorists now have almost precise information of how to replicate this disaster into something much worse.

 

If they didn't already know it, listening to the talking heads won't help them.  I was pretty sure of it before the blatherers blathered about it, they just confirmed it.

 

5 hours ago, watab kid said:

my understanding as well , but in so many ways the conditions were such that there was ample room to clear it , i guess we will have to see how it plays out but i have a lot of questions at this point , 

 

One of the local news guys pointed out that the MV was never in the proper channel but ran parallel to it.  To me that screams navigation error.  It had room to clear until power was lost.  Barely clear, but clear the bridge.

[Chantry]

There are other things that are relevant and need to be taken into consideration:

wind speed and wind direction

current speed and direction

tides

 

The bridge was completed in 1977, long before ships like the Dali were built.  So engineers never considered what a 95,000+ ton ship hitting a structural support would do or what, if anything, could be done to prevent a collapse.

 

[Rye Miles #13621]

19 hours ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

From what I  understand the talking heads saying about cantilever bridges  a failure of any section with bring the whole thing down.  And bridges aren't designed to carry much lateral load.

I’ve heard them saying the same thing. Watching that video it looked like a toy coming down! 

[watab kid]

13 hours ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

If they didn't already know it, listening to the talking heads won't help them.  I was pretty sure of it before the blatherers blathered about it, they just confirmed it.

 

 

One of the local news guys pointed out that the MV was never in the proper channel but ran parallel to it.  To me that screams navigation error.  It had room to clear until power was lost.  Barely clear, but clear the bridge.

that was how it appeared in the diagram of its path , both outside the channel and ample clearance , but the power issues played into that i suspect , 

[Blackwater 53393]

It’s been two full cycles of daylight and absolutely NOTHING has been done to start clearing the wreckage!!

 

I can understand them preserving the actual collision site, but crews should have already begun to clear the other spans and efforts begun to open a path to and from the harbor.

 

In years passed we’d have pulled out all the stops to get it done and get back to normal as fast as we could!!

[Sedalia Dave]

Most bridges will collapse when key structural components fail. While it is tragic that people lost their lives, knee jerk reactions are not going to instantly make all bridges 100% failure proof. It is not cost effective to build in a lot of redundancy for every possible failure. 

 

Also keep in mind that in 1972 the world's largest container ship was a mere 2950 teu. The Dali is 3 times that size and far from the largest. Currently the largest cargo ships are over 24000 teu.

 

It would have been unthinkable in 1970, that container ships would be the size of the ones currently in use.

 

 

Edited March 29 by Sedalia Dave

[Texas Joker]

8 hours ago, Blackwater 53393 said:

It’s been two full cycles of daylight and absolutely NOTHING has been done to start clearing the wreckage!!

 

I can understand them preserving the actual collision site, but crews should have already begun to clear the other spans and efforts begun to open a path to and from the harbor.

 

In years passed we’d have pulled out all the stops to get it done and get back to normal as fast as we could!!

2 days and nothing you've seen has happenned.

 

Likely the emergency response teams arrived set up an HQ and started delegating reposibility.

 

Taking into consideration the dangerous environment, the probability of structural collapse as removal occurs, they are going to need to survey and figure out how to even get started.

 

Did you just expect a bunch of boats with cutting torches to show up?

[Cypress Sun]

9 hours ago, Blackwater 53393 said:

It’s been two full cycles of daylight and absolutely NOTHING has been done to start clearing the wreckage!!

 

I can understand them preserving the actual collision site, but crews should have already begun to clear the other spans and efforts begun to open a path to and from the harbor.

 

In years passed we’d have pulled out all the stops to get it done and get back to normal as fast as we could!!

 

47 minutes ago, Texas Joker said:

2 days and nothing you've seen has happenned.

 

Likely the emergency response teams arrived set up an HQ and started delegating reposibility.

 

Taking into consideration the dangerous environment, the probability of structural collapse as removal occurs, they are going to need to survey and figure out how to even get started.

 

Did you just expect a bunch of boats with cutting torches to show up?

 

Some news on the debris removal.

 

Baltimore bridge collapse: Governor details plan to remove bridge and help affected (bbc.com)

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

Apparently, the largest floating crane on the Eastern Seaboard, capable of 2.2 MILLION pounds, single lift, has ben dispatched/arrived.  There are only 9.9 MILLION pounds of wreckage holding the Dali in place, and incredibly, Dali is still afloat.

 

The Salvage Engineers will have to attach the crane to each section to be cut apart, then remove the wreckage in small (relative) sections.  It's gonna take a while.  Then, the sections of the bridge sitting on the bottom have to floated (lift air bags) and also cut apart (or towed) to clear the channel.  Atz gonna take another while.

 

Scrap yards are going to get one hell of a bonanza.

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

I found this:

 

"UPDATE ON THE FSK BRIDGE CASUALTY

I understand that not everyone has a maritime background so I‘m writing this for better understanding

A couple days ago when I posted some initial thoughts on the FSK Bridge allision, I said:

“The thing that catches my attention the most is the sharp starboard turn into the bridge support. Older single screw (propeller) ships tend to turn when attempting to reverse. 

I was sure the MV DALI would have a multi-engine/prop given the size of the vessel. I was wrong.

After digging closer into details of the vessel, I was surprised to see that a vessel this size does in fact have a single engine / SINGLE SCREW. The MV DALI has a single 55,600 HP engine.

Given that, the first part of my description the other day seems to apply. A vessel with a single prop will take the stern to port (left), and push the bow starboard (right).

As we’ve seen in the video, when the black smoke came out during an attempt to backdown, we saw the bow make a fast turn to starboard. 

The vessel was moving about 8 or 9 knots when they attempted to backdown. With a single screw in reverse, they lose rudder control and with the bow being pushed starboard, they had no maneuvering capability and forward movement in the wrong place and time.

There are some other things I’m looking into now. Apparently, they had power issues in port before departing. Given that, they SHOULD HAVE STAYED AT THE PIER until fully checked out.

In 2020, the International Maritime Organization published IMO 2020 regulations requiring lower sulphur fuels for environmental reasons. I’m looking into the fuel issue now. 

Given the effects of the single screw, the location and forward motion, we know HOW it hit the bridge. The investigation will dig into the precipitating factors at the beginning of a sad chain of events to find the initial WHY.

In a maritime investigation, it’s important to identify the first causal factor and follow it out. Many times, after the precipitating factor, additional casualties, environmental or human factors can determine the final outcome."

[Ozark Huckleberry]

15 minutes ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

As we’ve seen in the video, when the black smoke came out during an attempt to backdown, we saw the bow make a fast turn to starboard. 

The vessel was moving about 8 or 9 knots when they attempted to backdown. With a single screw in reverse, they lose rudder control and with the bow being pushed starboard, they had no maneuvering capability and forward movement in the wrong place and time.

 

 

Thanks for the info. 

 

Regarding the turn to starboard, I was also thinking about the rudder position. If the crew knew the ship was right of the channel and trying to correct course when they lost power, the rudder would likely be to port (pushing stern to starboard for a left turn). If power was then restored and the propeller reversed without changing the rudder position, that would also serve to push the stern TO PORT -- effectively, a right turn.

 

But this is all speculation.

[Dubious Don #56333]

I know bupkus about boats, LOL. I was in the Army. I wanted safe, I dug a hole. I did not have to fear the ship sinking out from under me. neener-neener LOL. I do however, understand the "theory" of driving boats. And why big ones do not stop, turn or back up on a dime.

Kinda like driving a semi.

 

Conspiracy theories abound. Real or memorex? Dunno, don't care. I know these days, nothing is normal.

Are there people who would do us harm?

Yes.

Would these people stoop to industrial sabotage, electrical grids, pipelines, infrastructure, etc?

(big boats carrying goods to/from port hitting a bridge and bringing it down in the river thus blocking traffic to that port for an extended period...yeah, that fits the above, doesn't it?)

Ask yourself this, every time you see one of these stories. Or why certain politicians, other people do what they do;

Why?

Who got/gets paid?

Who benefits?

 

SO I found this. No idea if the guy's on the level but seems pretty straight, far as I can see. Any of y'all a ship's captain or driver, have at it.

To me, seemed to make a lot of sense in how this could have "accidentally" happened.

 

 

[Sedalia Dave]

Know nothing about maneuvering of big ships. However my stepson has a tournament ski boat that has a single prop inboard propulsion system with a single rudder behind the prop. Going forwards you have excellent maneuverability as the prop wash amplifies rudder inputs. In reverse it handles differently than an outboard or stern drive boat.

 

An inboard drive is impossible to back up in a straight line. And if you shift into reverse to help the boat slow down when approaching a dock it causes the bow to swing regardless of rudder position. The slower the boat is going the more pronounced the bow swing. The direction of the bow swing depends on if you have a right hand or left hand prop. (which way the prop turns in fwd). RH props swing the bow to starboard when in reverse.  LH props swing it to port. 

[Chantry]

News that I haven't seen the MSM report: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-salvage-ships-baltimore-francis-scott-key-bridge/

[Pat Riot]

Lots of people have taken hits over this wreck. My nephew, a coal miner is sitting at home. The coal he and his mine provide gets moved via Balitimore harbor. Same goes for my niece’s fiancé. Cooling their heels with no pay. 
 

I wonder how many other’s jobs are impacted?

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Just a footnote in all this. The crew consisting of 22Indian nationals are confined to the ship. Most reports say “ without internet “ which I interpret as they have no clue what’s happening.

[Pat Riot]

21 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

Just a footnote in all this. The crew consisting of 22Indian nationals are confined to the ship. Most reports say “ without internet “ which I interpret as they have no clue what’s happening.

So…no change then. If they had a clue they wouldn’t have hit the flippin’ bridge! 

[Subdeacon Joe]

13 hours ago, Pat Riot said:

 

I wonder how many other’s jobs are impacted?

 

Longshoremen, drayers, machine shops, auto parts stores,  shoe shops,  electricians,  toy stores, grain farmers, iron mines, car manufacturers,  car dealers,  almost everyone. 

[Pat Riot]

2 hours ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

Longshoremen, drayers, machine shops, auto parts stores,  shoe shops,  electricians,  toy stores, grain farmers, iron mines, car manufacturers,  car dealers,  almost everyone. 

This has far reaching effects. My relative’s jobs are 200 miles from Baltimore. 

[Cowtown Scout, SASS #53540 L]

3 hours ago, Pat Riot said:

So…no change then. If they had a clue they wouldn’t have hit the flippin’ bridge! 

I believe I read that there were 2 local harbor pilots on board in charge of the navigation out of the harbor, not the captain of the ship.

[Pat Riot]

Just now, Cowtown Scout, SASS #53540 L said:

I believe I read that there were 2 local harbor pilots on board in charge of the navigation out of the harbor, not the captain of the ship.

True, but a pilot cannot pilot and broke d*** ship without power. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

26 minutes ago, Pat Riot said:

This has far reaching effects. My relative’s jobs are 200 miles from Baltimore. 

 

Which is why I have no problem with the feds saying,  basically, "Here's the money up front,  we'll fight the insurance companies later....get cracking and get that port open."

 

Torches are already burning that steel. 

[bgavin]

I understand the same just happened in Oklahoma with a barge hitting a pylon.

The Baltimore bridge was built 1972~1977, before the era of endless environmental studies.
Today, I expect it might take even longer.

Once the channel is cleared of wreckage, shipping can probably continue.
Vehicle traffic will be a good long time before it resumes.