Cargo ship destroys interstate bridge in Baltimore
- Thread starter Kaitzilla
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PhroX
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Along with saying that the crash only happened because "diversity hires" (i.e. non-white people) were in charge of the boat.... (I really wish I was making that up)
The cargo ship's crew managed to get a mayday out in time!
Cops had 90 seconds to shutdown traffic in both directions and they did.
There wasn't enough time to get the construction crew of 8 people fixing potholes at 1:30AM.
They went down with the bridge.
2 were rescued from the 46F waters. (32F is freezing into ice for regular water)
1 of those 2 remains in the hospital.
The other 6 almost certainly perished.
Cops had 90 seconds to shutdown traffic in both directions and they did.
There wasn't enough time to get the construction crew of 8 people fixing potholes at 1:30AM.
They went down with the bridge.
2 were rescued from the 46F waters. (32F is freezing into ice for regular water)
1 of those 2 remains in the hospital.
The other 6 almost certainly perished.
EnglishEdward
Deity
In so much as the power failure resulted in loss of control, I'd expect
the investigation to look at the fault and maintenance history of that ship.
I.e. Was that the first time the power had totally failed and it was merely
co-incidence that it was by the bridge then OR had it been failing regularly
unnoticed by the authorities while it was away from other things at sea.
Even so I am wondering if the ship design lacked adequate contingency.
the investigation to look at the fault and maintenance history of that ship.
I.e. Was that the first time the power had totally failed and it was merely
co-incidence that it was by the bridge then OR had it been failing regularly
unnoticed by the authorities while it was away from other things at sea.
Even so I am wondering if the ship design lacked adequate contingency.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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we'll see wrt cause. situation sucks though. i doubt any deliberate sabotage, this has all the makings of a tragic accident where maybe they'll find someone to blame and maybe (or maybe not) that will be fair to assess on someone who didn't have benefit of hindsight.
my family used to drive past where sunshine skyway happened way back when, you could still see the busted bridge from the new one at that time. scary stuff.
reaction to this one was impressive, it is awful yet could have been much worse still. that isn't something easy for drivers to react to, and if you're close enough to where it happens it's not even possible to react in any useful way. stopping traffic likely saved a number of lives.
my family used to drive past where sunshine skyway happened way back when, you could still see the busted bridge from the new one at that time. scary stuff.
reaction to this one was impressive, it is awful yet could have been much worse still. that isn't something easy for drivers to react to, and if you're close enough to where it happens it's not even possible to react in any useful way. stopping traffic likely saved a number of lives.
There’s been a lot of this from the usual suspects.
Saw this while catching up on bridge news last night. Didn't expect something like this to be in the bridge news. Watched the same video Kyriakos posted, and it's surprising just how quickly the bridge fell. Large cargo ships have a lot of inertia, but I hadn't realized just how much.
Hasn't been mentioned here yet, but the same ship had an incident in Belgium, scraping up against the edge of the quay, in 2016. Haven't found many details on that yet (and I originally found it on a more reputable source which I'm now having trouble finding, but the Sun has the same picture). But it does make you wonder if there wasn't something a bit substandard in the electrical or propulsion systems that wasn't fully patched up after that 2016 incident.
Hasn't been mentioned here yet, but the same ship had an incident in Belgium, scraping up against the edge of the quay, in 2016. Haven't found many details on that yet (and I originally found it on a more reputable source which I'm now having trouble finding, but the Sun has the same picture). But it does make you wonder if there wasn't something a bit substandard in the electrical or propulsion systems that wasn't fully patched up after that 2016 incident.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Ship was around 100 000 tons IIRC. Let's say it moves at the sluggish pace of 6,2 Km/h (that's a brisk walk), so 2 m/s.
That's roughly 400 million joules, so about 100 Kg of TNT.
Paying for the Baltimore bridge collapse will be a complicated, years long mess
The massive cargo ship crash into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge will likely lead to billions of dollars in liability claims. Marine insurance companies will be on the hook for much of the costs. With various owners and companies involved – and with some maritime laws predating even the Titanic sinking – untangling the web, figuring out who owes what, and addressing the damages from both lives lost and to physical structures will be complex. “This claim has the potential to be north of a billion dollars,” said John Miklus, the president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters. “Litigation will run years.”Much more here:
That sounds like a lot, although relating those numbers to something relatable is a bit challenging (note to self: kilograms, not kilotons of TNT, which is what I'm used to reading). I suppose a freight train is the real-world example that is most likely applicable. I've seen varying numbers, but the average ones I'm seeing is a freight train weights 15,000 to 20,000 tons, although some of the super-long multi-locomotive ones that are increasingly popular can weigh more. This also checks out with modern coal hoppers (still somewhat common around here, though a lot less so than 20 years ago) weighing over 110 tons each, as of 2012. Let's say the train moves at 38 mph (60 kmph), which may seem slow but these fully loaded trains aren't speed demons. That's 10 times the 6.2 kmph, but 1/6th to 1/5th the weight. So the train would be somewhere in the 166 to 200 kg of TNT range - or in other words, a bit more forceful than the Dali.
Although, the train is also a lot longer, and flexible, so suspect it would have derailed and not had the entire force focus on one support pillar.
I've also seen that the Dali was traveling about 8 mph, with some sources saying it slowed to a bit over 6 mph before colliding (perhaps due to dropping anchor?). Which would multiply the 100 Kg figure by 1.6 at the 6 mph figure, for 160 Kg of TNT. Or about the same as a loaded freight train, but with all the force concentrated at one point.
Some updates from USA Today:
USA Today said:
So the anchor was dropped prior to collision, and some "not serious enough" propulsion and auxiliary machinery issues were found last June. Could they have become more serious over the past nine months if not addressed?
amadeus
Serenity now
I think something funny had to be up. How did they know to remove the rails that Joe Biden commuted on so many times? 
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Don't think the anchor would be of any use. Even in a tiny static sailboat the anchor is of not much use if the bottom is sand, even a not particularly strong wind could be enough to move the anchored boat since the anchor won't grab at any point and will be easily dragged around. That happened in a beach near my hometown in Tarifa, at the southernmost end of the Iberian peninsula , years ago. A precious, about 45 feet sail boat owned by some rich foolish English tourists who obviously didn't read about Trafalgar battle, anchored in a beautiful cove to make night there. As it's usual in the zone, a fresh breeze blew from east all night, next morning she was on the rocks and the tourists had to be rescued by the police. She remained there for a number of years, in one piece and apparently in good shape, you needed to inspect the inners to find the rocks had left the hull totally bottomless and therefore was a total loss.
She grounded at a pretty unaccessible spot under a cliff behind some corner at a rocky cape and was not visible from the beach so few people knew it was there and even fewer had the will/agility to reach that place (anyway the valuable inox parts as railings, wheel and such disappeared quickly), so it was my personal playground as a child/teenager for several summers. Fortunately the hull and structure were entirely made of aluminum and didn't rust. I even stored some of my snorkeling and fishing equipment in the boat lockers so I had not to carry it when going to the cape to practice spearfishing. This one was the ship:
Sadly she is not there anymore. Don't know if was scrapped or some storm took she away or reduced her to bits.
sorry for the ramblings, but ah, the memories...
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Sand is an ideal holding bottom for your typical (modern) ship anchor; they're designed to dig in to it, the weight of an anchor itself (and the chain rode attached to it) doesn't do anything for ship holding itself but rather to make sure the anchor digs into the bottom. The catch in this particular case is that they don't dig in unless the pull/tension is closer to horizontal, and so Dali's merely dropping the anchor to the bottom wasn't going to do it, it needed to pay out some in order to get more horizontal pull and the longer it went without taking tension, the less time to actually stop Dali from hitting the bridge. It's one hell of a judgment call.
They're looking at opening to one-way traffic first by clearing as much as they can of the channel proper, there's a couple heavylift cranes that should be showing up today and I'm sure some of it they'll use explosives to pulverize into the bottom rather than crane up and away. My own rough guess is it'll be open one-way three weeks from now. It won't open two-way till the Dali itself is towed away, and I've seen talk of breached containers with hazmat on the bow that need to be dealt with, but probably a couple weeks after that.
Baltimore is the 20th-busiest port in the US and apparently handles mostly cars and heavy farm equipment so with apologies to Farm Boy, I wouldn't rate the channel blockage as serious a problem (from an economic standpoint) as EverGiven's corkage of Suez. I do pity Baltimore commuters, though my guess is pandemic-era work@home policies just got reinstated in most Maryland offices.
Edit: Found a useful article: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/business/clearing-bridge-debris-reopen-port-of-baltimore
Akka
Moody old mage.
Actually much more, because energy is proportional to the SQUARE of celerity. So 10 times the speed but 1/5th the weight means actually 20 times more energy, not double.
That being said, as you pointed, a train is a flexible chain of multiple wagons, so the impact is nowhere near comparable, as the vast majority of the energy ends up dissipated in derailment/internal collision from different elements of the train. While a ship delivers most of the energy at the point of impact due to being mostly rigid.
So about twice the speed I took as baseline.
That makes it 1,5 tonne of TNT. I'd say it's easily able to blow the pillar to smithereen, so no surprise it crushed it.
Farm Boy
run boy run
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I'm not rich enough to worry about heavy farm equipment. It will probably hurt Moline's exports. I've pre-purchased my fertilizer for this year, that's next year's headache, if it matters. We've pivoted to Canada and away from the Russian Empire for some of that, which would be the most consequential impact. I think cars move through there, too, European car imports aren't really in my range either.
The good news in terms of Baltimore commuting is that the bridge was on the outermost loop of highways, not on any routes to the city center, as the bridges between New Jersey and Manhattan are. The I-895 and I-95 tunnels are not that far away. Certainly inconvenient if you happened to take that route daily, but Google Maps is saying the alternative is 30-40 minutes. Unless you are carrying hazardous cargo, then it's a much longer detour.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
True, i remember now the few lessons i took, they recommended to release a chain lenght three times the depth for the anchor to be horizontal. Later i have used only a tiny pneumatic launch with a simple grapnel which was of not use in sand. In any case the English tourists did something very worng obviously.
