I saw a video on this. That bridge was way bigger than I thought and it went through a total collapse. It's good that it happened at night because I assume that bridge sees massive traffic during...
I saw a video on this. That bridge was way bigger than I thought and it went through a total collapse.
It's good that it happened at night because I assume that bridge sees massive traffic during the day.
Apparently the ship was able to send a mayday that they'd lost power with enough notice that police were able to halt more vehicles from getting on the bridge before the collapse. It's just a...
Apparently the ship was able to send a mayday that they'd lost power with enough notice that police were able to halt more vehicles from getting on the bridge before the collapse. It's just a devastating amount of damage to watch the whole thing fall into the river immediately.
I think movies condition us to think that it'd be slower and it's absolutely not.
Interesting. While watching the webcam video I noticed the lights of the ship going on and off and was wondering if that had anything to do with the accident. I guess that could be explained by...
Interesting. While watching the webcam video I noticed the lights of the ship going on and off and was wondering if that had anything to do with the accident. I guess that could be explained by power issues.
It's the southeast linkage that lets the Baltimore beltway form a complete circle, and it's one of two major crossings of the Patapsco - and by far the more useful one. The northern crossing is a...
It's the southeast linkage that lets the Baltimore beltway form a complete circle, and it's one of two major crossings of the Patapsco - and by far the more useful one. The northern crossing is a tunnel that goes under a narrower portion of the river that is much closer to the city, and I expect it will be jam packed for the entirety of the time the bridge is out of commission.
The larger impact is going to be that the Port of Baltimore is temporarily inaccessible while the debris blocks the shipping lanes through the river, which will probably be cleared up quickly but will cause immense economic and shipping hassles even so.
I saw a headline right before I went to bed. Since it was a developing story, all the article said was, "The extent of the damage to the bridge was not immediately clear." I was thinking it was...
I saw a headline right before I went to bed. Since it was a developing story, all the article said was, "The extent of the damage to the bridge was not immediately clear." I was thinking it was just a small incident on a smaller bridge. I've only been to Baltimore once over a decade ago, so I didn't know what this bridge was. But I was curious. A couple minutes later, I saw the videos. I didn't believe it was real at first. I seriously wondered if I was watching an AI-generated video. The twitter accounts I saw them on didn't look particularly trustworthy.
So I spent another 10-20min waiting for news to come in from more reliable sources. And sadly, it did. What a disaster. Hopefully they're able to rescue more people, though after this many hours later in cold water makes me think the likelihood of that is rapidly fading.
Get ready for all of the videos explaining why the whole thing fell. That was the biggest part for me. A bridge constructed in sections should not concertina into the sea like that. I would have...
Get ready for all of the videos explaining why the whole thing fell. That was the biggest part for me.
A bridge constructed in sections should not concertina into the sea like that. I would have expected it to break at points.
The FSK bridge was a continuous-truss bridge with an integrated arch, and both of those support structures were compromised by the hit. Continuous-truss bridges are severely impacted if one...
The FSK bridge was a continuous-truss bridge with an integrated arch, and both of those support structures were compromised by the hit. Continuous-truss bridges are severely impacted if one portion of the truss is broken.
You can see the event clearly with this link of a livestream of the bridge and the port : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg At around 1:29AMish you can see the bridge fall. If you go...
At around 1:29AMish you can see the bridge fall. If you go back a few minutes before that, you can see the ship drifting, the power cutting in and out. I cannot stress enough that you will see the five construction vehicles fall into the water. It's a horrible thing to see.
Really wild. This is a major traffic artery and something I always thought would be there. And I'm not even from Baltimore! Hope they pull the remaining folks out. I can't imagine how frightening...
Really wild. This is a major traffic artery and something I always thought would be there. And I'm not even from Baltimore! Hope they pull the remaining folks out. I can't imagine how frightening it would be to suddenly be falling as you drive over the bridge.
My biggest concern for anyone that survived the collapse is hypothermia. The ocean is cold this time of year, especially at night. Someone swimming should have at least 30 minutes before passing...
My biggest concern for anyone that survived the collapse is hypothermia. The ocean is cold this time of year, especially at night. Someone swimming should have at least 30 minutes before passing out...
In this moment of tragedy no one should be cracking jokes, but I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. Huh, I guess they shouldn't have been depending on the car-specific GPS when travelling near a...
In this moment of tragedy no one should be cracking jokes, but I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.
Huh, I guess they shouldn't have been depending on the car-specific GPS when travelling near a historic bridge.
That's ok, my first thought was how much this looks just like losing at Bridge Builder - the classic one, not the new one. My second was to replay it as I saw the road crew's flashy lights. I...
That's ok, my first thought was how much this looks just like losing at Bridge Builder - the classic one, not the new one.
My second was to replay it as I saw the road crew's flashy lights. I can't believe anyone survived that. Just glad they got traffic off before it fell, imagine if it was rush hour. :(
The Coast Guard received a report of an impact at 1:27 a.m. Eastern time at the Francis Scott Key Bridge, said Matthew West, a petty officer first class for the Coast Guard in Baltimore.
Detective Niki Fennoy of the Baltimore Police said that the department had been notified early Tuesday morning of “a partial bridge collapse with possible workers in the water.” Mayor Brandon M. Scott said on X that he was “en route to the incident at the Key Bridge.”
The Baltimore County Fire Department also confirmed the collapse, and the Maryland Transportation Authority urged motorists to avoid the bridge, which is part of Interstate 695.
Does this seem like they ended the search quite early? In other disasters I feel like I've seen searches go on for days or weeks. However I do not have the data to back that up, I'm just curious.
Does this seem like they ended the search quite early? In other disasters I feel like I've seen searches go on for days or weeks. However I do not have the data to back that up, I'm just curious.
Like others said, basically unless you get out of the water quickly there's minimal chance of survival. I don't know that there's any prevailing current in the bay that would sweep folks towards...
Like others said, basically unless you get out of the water quickly there's minimal chance of survival. I don't know that there's any prevailing current in the bay that would sweep folks towards safety. But even then if they weren't found quickly while soaked through and exposed to the air, there's little chance.
No warning siren to warn people? No protection for the bridge piers despite such huge ships moving through? I feel like some measures could have been taken to prevent this.
No warning siren to warn people? No protection for the bridge piers despite such huge ships moving through? I feel like some measures could have been taken to prevent this.
The ship did send a mayday signal to authorities that they had lost control before the collision. As a result, police prevented cars from entering the bridge, which is why you don’t see any on the...
The ship did send a mayday signal to authorities that they had lost control before the collision. As a result, police prevented cars from entering the bridge, which is why you don’t see any on the footage.
Yes, I read that bit. I'm talking about warning people already on the bridge, as in the road crew. It just said they stopped traffic, but what was done to warn those on it already? It didn't look...
Yes, I read that bit. I'm talking about warning people already on the bridge, as in the road crew. It just said they stopped traffic, but what was done to warn those on it already? It didn't look like the road crew trucks were moving, but maybe they tried to run? :/
I think the issue is how would you warn them. Obviously the police can't go on the bridge, that would just be adding another body to the total. Call them? Maybe they just didn't have enough time...
I think the issue is how would you warn them. Obviously the police can't go on the bridge, that would just be adding another body to the total. Call them? Maybe they just didn't have enough time to find their numbers. It's not like you can know who is working on that bridge psychically.
If the ship gave the warning, say, 10 minutes before, that's probably enough time for police cars to stop traffic on both sides, but not enough time to a) find who those workers are b) what their cell number is c) contact them and have them drive off.
I checked google streetview, and there's these electronic highway noticeboards ~2 miles out from the bridge. I suspect that's the only way you're going to stop traffic this quickly.
I checked google streetview, and there's these electronic highway noticeboards ~2 miles out from the bridge. I suspect that's the only way you're going to stop traffic this quickly.
It's a tolled bridge. Police were already at both ends, all you have to do is park horizontally across the road and have your sirens on. Of course, it helps that it was at 1am - if it were rush...
It's a tolled bridge. Police were already at both ends, all you have to do is park horizontally across the road and have your sirens on. Of course, it helps that it was at 1am - if it were rush hour, you could block traffic but getting everyone out in 4 minutes would be impossible.
I was thinking more like a speaker system for use in an emergency to warn everyone the bridge might collapse. Though I just watched another video that's a bit better, they had very little time...
I was thinking more like a speaker system for use in an emergency to warn everyone the bridge might collapse.
Though I just watched another video that's a bit better, they had very little time even if they were warned.
I thought that too for a second, but with how rare incidents like this are, I don't think the costs could really be justified. Most bridge collapses aren't really "predictable" like this one. I...
I thought that too for a second, but with how rare incidents like this are, I don't think the costs could really be justified.
Most bridge collapses aren't really "predictable" like this one. I skimmed the Wikipedia list of bridge failures and I counted maybe about 12 involving ships, which are probably among the easiest to see coming. Otherwise they tend to be pretty sudden though, such as natural disasters (particularly floods), structural defects finally rearing their ugly heads, trains derailing, cars crashing or trucks catching fire, etc.
Basically, a majority of collapses come from causes that either A) are very sudden and lead to a swift breakdown, so no time to really issue a warning; or B) would almost certainly already be a known risk to people on the bridge (namely floods and fires).
So while a speaker system could have saved lives this time, most of the time it wouldn't really change anything. With the costs of installing, maintaining, repairing and replacing a system that's statistically unlikely to ever be used... Well, I support preventative measures but that would feel like a waste of funding that could be better spent elsewhere.
Why not use an SMS warning? According to my phone's settings they are available at the state and local level. I would hope that emergency services has the ability to send texts via those systems.
Why not use an SMS warning? According to my phone's settings they are available at the state and local level. I would hope that emergency services has the ability to send texts via those systems.
In this specific scenario? There was only 4 minutes reportedly between the mayday and collision so it just wouldn't be fast enough. They were pretty doomed. In general, that's one avenue, but it's...
In this specific scenario? There was only 4 minutes reportedly between the mayday and collision so it just wouldn't be fast enough. They were pretty doomed.
In general, that's one avenue, but it's likely they'd just ignore it. People tend to get boy-who-called-wolf about alerts.
I'm interested to know what kind of protection exists that could withstand a moving 200,000+ ton container ship, that gets buried into the ground 50 ft below the waterline.
I'm interested to know what kind of protection exists that could withstand a moving 200,000+ ton container ship, that gets buried into the ground 50 ft below the waterline.
There are objects referred to as Dolphins, but they're not cheap. A bridge in Florida that got hit by a ship in the 80s was rebuilt with them - you can see them on the map at...
There are objects referred to as Dolphins, but they're not cheap. A bridge in Florida that got hit by a ship in the 80s was rebuilt with them - you can see them on the map at https://www.google.com/maps/search/sunshine+skyway/@27.6180265,-82.6554579,1158m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu. Just those protections cost $90mil in today's dollars, as they're essentially 10-30 meter diameter concrete and rebar cylinders that extend down to the bedrock with piers driven down in to the rock to stabilize them. The big ones near the center piers are 25ish meters across, for example.
A regular fender would do nothing here. They're good for smaller ships, or ships going slow, but this ship was going an order of magnitude faster than even the toughest ones of those are rated for. You need something that's both fixed and has a significant fraction of the mass of the thing hitting it.
I was curious so I did some digging. The ones around that bridge in Florida are designed to withstand 87k tons. The Dali was 95k tons which is apparently average. Maybe in this case it would have...
I was curious so I did some digging. The ones around that bridge in Florida are designed to withstand 87k tons. The Dali was 95k tons which is apparently average. Maybe in this case it would have been close enough to have worked, though. I imagine they'll do something differently next time around, in any case.
Yeah, I'd be curious if one of those spec'd like that would have stopped this ship, or if it would have to be even larger or something. I dunno, something for someone better at math and physics...
Yeah, I'd be curious if one of those spec'd like that would have stopped this ship, or if it would have to be even larger or something. I dunno, something for someone better at math and physics than I.
The ship did seemingly come to a stop after hitting the support column, so I guess there are some things that can stop a 200,000 ton container ship. Given the relative rarity of the circumstances,...
The ship did seemingly come to a stop after hitting the support column, so I guess there are some things that can stop a 200,000 ton container ship. Given the relative rarity of the circumstances, who is to say that having some kind of protective barrier would have made sense, and may not be feasible to cover all possible angles without limiting the path and various other reasons that we may not be aware of that could limit the usefulness of it.
This bridge existed for nearly 50 years before this incident happened, and maybe there's many others like it that have been around longer without such an incident. It's hard to just look at these circumstances and immediately assume it's just inadequate protection measures without knowing more.
I mean it does seem kind of strange to assume such critical infrastructure that has such frequent container ship traffic passing under it is one poorly maintained ship away from total collapse like that, and makes you wonder how it doesn't happen more if that's all it takes. Maybe that does indicate there were inadequate protection measures in this scenario that do exist in others, I don't know.
I think most bridges would collapse if a large cargo ship rammed into the support column, and I'm not sure how many protective barriers could effectively stop it. A lot of incidents and tragedies...
I think most bridges would collapse if a large cargo ship rammed into the support column, and I'm not sure how many protective barriers could effectively stop it. A lot of incidents and tragedies basically boil down to some external factor going wrong, regardless of design.
I think the reason this doesn't happen more often is just because of other preventative measures and regulations within the maritime industries. There are regular ship inspections for starters (and this ship passed one in September 2023), and most ships will have experienced veterans in command positions who know how to steer ships around bridges. Then there are pilots, who are local specialists familiar with the waters around ports who take control of navigating ships into ports. A few articles mention that the ship was under control of at least one pilot at the time of the accident.
But even with all those measures, issues can still pop up with very little notice. This time really does seem like a case of horrific bad timing for a mechanical issue.
Not a direct answer, but the solution is stricter requirements and better regulation of the ships. A full power outage should really not happen on a ship like that without multiple failures. There...
Not a direct answer, but the solution is stricter requirements and better regulation of the ships. A full power outage should really not happen on a ship like that without multiple failures. There should be redundancy, failsafes, and thorough, meaningful inspections.
This article claims protection for local bridges are sufficient. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/could-sf-golden-gate-bridge-collapse-19370020.php
I saw a video on this. That bridge was way bigger than I thought and it went through a total collapse.
It's good that it happened at night because I assume that bridge sees massive traffic during the day.
Apparently the ship was able to send a mayday that they'd lost power with enough notice that police were able to halt more vehicles from getting on the bridge before the collapse. It's just a devastating amount of damage to watch the whole thing fall into the river immediately.
I think movies condition us to think that it'd be slower and it's absolutely not.
Interesting. While watching the webcam video I noticed the lights of the ship going on and off and was wondering if that had anything to do with the accident. I guess that could be explained by power issues.
Yeah, who knows right now, it'll take time to put all the pieces together. The mayday though almost certainly saved lives.
It's the southeast linkage that lets the Baltimore beltway form a complete circle, and it's one of two major crossings of the Patapsco - and by far the more useful one. The northern crossing is a tunnel that goes under a narrower portion of the river that is much closer to the city, and I expect it will be jam packed for the entirety of the time the bridge is out of commission.
The larger impact is going to be that the Port of Baltimore is temporarily inaccessible while the debris blocks the shipping lanes through the river, which will probably be cleared up quickly but will cause immense economic and shipping hassles even so.
I saw a headline right before I went to bed. Since it was a developing story, all the article said was, "The extent of the damage to the bridge was not immediately clear." I was thinking it was just a small incident on a smaller bridge. I've only been to Baltimore once over a decade ago, so I didn't know what this bridge was. But I was curious. A couple minutes later, I saw the videos. I didn't believe it was real at first. I seriously wondered if I was watching an AI-generated video. The twitter accounts I saw them on didn't look particularly trustworthy.
So I spent another 10-20min waiting for news to come in from more reliable sources. And sadly, it did. What a disaster. Hopefully they're able to rescue more people, though after this many hours later in cold water makes me think the likelihood of that is rapidly fading.
Get ready for all of the videos explaining why the whole thing fell. That was the biggest part for me.
A bridge constructed in sections should not concertina into the sea like that. I would have expected it to break at points.
The FSK bridge was a continuous-truss bridge with an integrated arch, and both of those support structures were compromised by the hit. Continuous-truss bridges are severely impacted if one portion of the truss is broken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_truss_bridge
Sounds like a bad design at that length.
Thank you for the explanation.
Downplayed article of the year right there.
You can see the event clearly with this link of a livestream of the bridge and the port : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg
At around 1:29AMish you can see the bridge fall. If you go back a few minutes before that, you can see the ship drifting, the power cutting in and out. I cannot stress enough that you will see the five construction vehicles fall into the water. It's a horrible thing to see.
Really wild. This is a major traffic artery and something I always thought would be there. And I'm not even from Baltimore! Hope they pull the remaining folks out. I can't imagine how frightening it would be to suddenly be falling as you drive over the bridge.
My biggest concern for anyone that survived the collapse is hypothermia. The ocean is cold this time of year, especially at night. Someone swimming should have at least 30 minutes before passing out...
In this moment of tragedy no one should be cracking jokes, but I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.
Huh, I guess they shouldn't have been depending on the car-specific GPS when travelling near a historic bridge.Now it's historic by definition, it's just no longer a bridge.
That's ok, my first thought was how much this looks just like losing at Bridge Builder - the classic one, not the new one.
My second was to replay it as I saw the road crew's flashy lights. I can't believe anyone survived that. Just glad they got traffic off before it fell, imagine if it was rush hour. :(
Everyone processes horror differently. I don't begrudge you a bit of gallows humor. It's one of my own survival tactics.
Live Updates: Coast Guard Ends Search for 6 Missing [workers presumed dead] in Bridge Disaster
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse
Does this seem like they ended the search quite early? In other disasters I feel like I've seen searches go on for days or weeks. However I do not have the data to back that up, I'm just curious.
My guess is that it has something to do with the water, there's really not much surviving once you go underneath.
What I read is that the water was quite cold, less than 50 degrees f. They were discussing probable survival times of less than an hour
Like others said, basically unless you get out of the water quickly there's minimal chance of survival. I don't know that there's any prevailing current in the bay that would sweep folks towards safety. But even then if they weren't found quickly while soaked through and exposed to the air, there's little chance.
Just saw that they had actually suspended the search until Wednesday morning. So they weren't just giving up early. The NYT just worded it poorly.
No warning siren to warn people? No protection for the bridge piers despite such huge ships moving through? I feel like some measures could have been taken to prevent this.
The ship did send a mayday signal to authorities that they had lost control before the collision. As a result, police prevented cars from entering the bridge, which is why you don’t see any on the footage.
Yes, I read that bit. I'm talking about warning people already on the bridge, as in the road crew. It just said they stopped traffic, but what was done to warn those on it already? It didn't look like the road crew trucks were moving, but maybe they tried to run? :/
I think the issue is how would you warn them. Obviously the police can't go on the bridge, that would just be adding another body to the total. Call them? Maybe they just didn't have enough time to find their numbers. It's not like you can know who is working on that bridge psychically.
If the ship gave the warning, say, 10 minutes before, that's probably enough time for police cars to stop traffic on both sides, but not enough time to a) find who those workers are b) what their cell number is c) contact them and have them drive off.
I checked google streetview, and there's these electronic highway noticeboards ~2 miles out from the bridge. I suspect that's the only way you're going to stop traffic this quickly.
It's a tolled bridge. Police were already at both ends, all you have to do is park horizontally across the road and have your sirens on. Of course, it helps that it was at 1am - if it were rush hour, you could block traffic but getting everyone out in 4 minutes would be impossible.
I was thinking more like a speaker system for use in an emergency to warn everyone the bridge might collapse.
Though I just watched another video that's a bit better, they had very little time even if they were warned.
I thought that too for a second, but with how rare incidents like this are, I don't think the costs could really be justified.
Most bridge collapses aren't really "predictable" like this one. I skimmed the Wikipedia list of bridge failures and I counted maybe about 12 involving ships, which are probably among the easiest to see coming. Otherwise they tend to be pretty sudden though, such as natural disasters (particularly floods), structural defects finally rearing their ugly heads, trains derailing, cars crashing or trucks catching fire, etc.
Basically, a majority of collapses come from causes that either A) are very sudden and lead to a swift breakdown, so no time to really issue a warning; or B) would almost certainly already be a known risk to people on the bridge (namely floods and fires).
So while a speaker system could have saved lives this time, most of the time it wouldn't really change anything. With the costs of installing, maintaining, repairing and replacing a system that's statistically unlikely to ever be used... Well, I support preventative measures but that would feel like a waste of funding that could be better spent elsewhere.
Why not use an SMS warning? According to my phone's settings they are available at the state and local level. I would hope that emergency services has the ability to send texts via those systems.
I wonder how long that would take to get going though. Also this whole thing is so far out of the norm that maybe it wasn't considered.
In this specific scenario? There was only 4 minutes reportedly between the mayday and collision so it just wouldn't be fast enough. They were pretty doomed.
In general, that's one avenue, but it's likely they'd just ignore it. People tend to get boy-who-called-wolf about alerts.
I'm interested to know what kind of protection exists that could withstand a moving 200,000+ ton container ship, that gets buried into the ground 50 ft below the waterline.
There are objects referred to as Dolphins, but they're not cheap. A bridge in Florida that got hit by a ship in the 80s was rebuilt with them - you can see them on the map at https://www.google.com/maps/search/sunshine+skyway/@27.6180265,-82.6554579,1158m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu. Just those protections cost $90mil in today's dollars, as they're essentially 10-30 meter diameter concrete and rebar cylinders that extend down to the bedrock with piers driven down in to the rock to stabilize them. The big ones near the center piers are 25ish meters across, for example.
A regular fender would do nothing here. They're good for smaller ships, or ships going slow, but this ship was going an order of magnitude faster than even the toughest ones of those are rated for. You need something that's both fixed and has a significant fraction of the mass of the thing hitting it.
I was curious so I did some digging. The ones around that bridge in Florida are designed to withstand 87k tons. The Dali was 95k tons which is apparently average. Maybe in this case it would have been close enough to have worked, though. I imagine they'll do something differently next time around, in any case.
Yeah, I'd be curious if one of those spec'd like that would have stopped this ship, or if it would have to be even larger or something. I dunno, something for someone better at math and physics than I.
The ship did seemingly come to a stop after hitting the support column, so I guess there are some things that can stop a 200,000 ton container ship. Given the relative rarity of the circumstances, who is to say that having some kind of protective barrier would have made sense, and may not be feasible to cover all possible angles without limiting the path and various other reasons that we may not be aware of that could limit the usefulness of it.
This bridge existed for nearly 50 years before this incident happened, and maybe there's many others like it that have been around longer without such an incident. It's hard to just look at these circumstances and immediately assume it's just inadequate protection measures without knowing more.
I mean it does seem kind of strange to assume such critical infrastructure that has such frequent container ship traffic passing under it is one poorly maintained ship away from total collapse like that, and makes you wonder how it doesn't happen more if that's all it takes. Maybe that does indicate there were inadequate protection measures in this scenario that do exist in others, I don't know.
I think most bridges would collapse if a large cargo ship rammed into the support column, and I'm not sure how many protective barriers could effectively stop it. A lot of incidents and tragedies basically boil down to some external factor going wrong, regardless of design.
I think the reason this doesn't happen more often is just because of other preventative measures and regulations within the maritime industries. There are regular ship inspections for starters (and this ship passed one in September 2023), and most ships will have experienced veterans in command positions who know how to steer ships around bridges. Then there are pilots, who are local specialists familiar with the waters around ports who take control of navigating ships into ports. A few articles mention that the ship was under control of at least one pilot at the time of the accident.
But even with all those measures, issues can still pop up with very little notice. This time really does seem like a case of horrific bad timing for a mechanical issue.
In Florida they built large concrete pylons called "dolphins" to prevent this exact thing.
Not a direct answer, but the solution is stricter requirements and better regulation of the ships. A full power outage should really not happen on a ship like that without multiple failures. There should be redundancy, failsafes, and thorough, meaningful inspections.
This article claims protection for local bridges are sufficient.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/could-sf-golden-gate-bridge-collapse-19370020.php