[HN Gopher] Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses
___________________________________________________________________
Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses
Author : tbihl
Score : 463 points
Date : 2024-03-26 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wbaltv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wbaltv.com)
| telotortium wrote:
| Collapsed because a container ship ran into it.
|
| " The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland which
| crosses the Patapsco River has reportedly Collapsed within the
| last few minutes after being Struck by a Large Container Ship; a
| Mass Casualty Incident has been Declared with over a Dozen Cars
| and many Individuals said to be in the Water."
| divbzero wrote:
| This has been confirmed by local authorities:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/26/major-bridge-in-baltimore-co...
|
| https://twitter.com/TheMDTA/status/1772524001815920876
| morsch wrote:
| As of right now, that page starts out with a photo of an
| entirely different bridge of the same name from Washington DC,
| quite confusing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Bridge_(Washington,_D.C.)
| (hn breaks the trailing parenthesis in the link)
|
| Edit: they removed the photo.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yeah I've encountered url parsing problems on hn before too
| -- it pays to always check your links. It forgot the . too,
| which made it think the url was over! You can use percent
| encoding in such cases -- . is %2E and ) is %29:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Bridge_(Washington,_D.C%.
| ..
| sva_ wrote:
| It was hit by a container ship
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/us/ship-hits-baltimore-ke...
|
| That's gonna be expensive.
| carl_dr wrote:
| And more importantly, distressing for the people who lost loved
| ones.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Alternative (registration wall, I think).
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/mar/26/baltimo...
| fransje26 wrote:
| No, you can click on "I'll do it later" to bypass it.
| tomlong wrote:
| I think this is region dependent
| fransje26 wrote:
| Ah, that's a possibility I didn't take into account. I
| thought they were being more forthcoming than other news
| outlets, but didn't consider that it might be a
| "regional" perk.
| sva_ wrote:
| Bypass Paywall Clean works.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| The footage looks absolutely crazy - I hope people are safe.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Judging by the footage with the bridge being over water and the
| temperature in Baltimore near freezing, I would guess no they
| are not. The outcome of this is going to be very unpleasant.
| fransje26 wrote:
| "Luckily" this was not during rush-hour..
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Unluckily it was at night, so an already disorienting
| situation is going to be harder and any already difficult
| rescue is going to be hampered further. It will be a
| miracle if any meaningful % of those who fell in the water
| survived.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Fransje26 has a point. If this had been during rush hour
| the numbers would be 20x what they are right now.
|
| Of course it's still tragic and awful.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I just watched the footage. It's pretty horrifying. The whole
| bridge collapsed in a few seconds. It's a pretty long drop
| down to the water. Anyone on that bridge ended up in the
| water with little/no warning.
|
| That drop alone would injure/kill many. And immediately after
| people would be in cold water still locked in their vehicles.
| The water there was deep enough to be able to deal with
| loaded container ships. So, tens of meters at least. If you
| then factor in currents and the amount of time it takes to
| mount any form of rescue operation with divers, etc. it
| starts looking pretty grim indeed.
|
| I hope rescue workers pull off a minor miracle.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| from what I can tell it didn't look like vehicles, it
| looked like road maintenance, so people outside and maybe a
| vehicle. only difference is not trapped in vehicle,
| everything else still dire
| Symbiote wrote:
| There's a slight benefit that a road crew will be dressed
| for nighttime outside weather, with reflective clothing,
| are all adults, and probably have some level of physical
| fitness.
| thfuran wrote:
| If you're going to be dropped into water, heavy clothing
| is probably very much not what you want.
| baq wrote:
| Thick winter clothing is what you want _if_ you have
| something to hold on to which floats. Otherwise it 's a
| choice between drowning and hypothermia...
| brazzy wrote:
| > The water there was deep enough to be able to deal with
| loaded container ships. So, tens of meters at least.
|
| There are only a handful of ships in the world with a draft
| of more than 20 meters. The ship involved in the collision
| has a (maximum) draft of 15 meters.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Doesn't really matter. You can drown in 1 meter.
| Taniwha wrote:
| Looking at the video there was little traffic at just that
| minute ... but sadly it does look like there was a road crew up
| there
| mongol wrote:
| Video here
| https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1772514015790477667
| exar0815 wrote:
| While this tweet is factual, be very careful with this account
| in general, is has turned from a good source to a very slanted
| and biased fake-news-accelerator.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Have any examples of fake news from that source we should be
| careful about?
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt...
| ks2048 wrote:
| Already roughly 75 edits since the collapse.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| It makes me wonder what goes through someone's head when one
| sees a mass casualty event like this, and your first instinct
| is to rush to Wikipedia to change the article to past tense
| ('was' a bridge).
| hiddencost wrote:
| There is a lot of misinformation in the world, and
| Wikipedia can often be one of the places people go to for
| reliable knowledge.
|
| They probably will be getting more traffic than any single
| major news paper.
|
| A lot of people, potentially scared and confused, and going
| to be reading that article and making decisions based on
| it.
|
| Keeping the information good and complete sounds to me like
| a deep kindness.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Free Internet points.
| fransje26 wrote:
| But who is counting?
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Other Wikipedia edit warriors.
| fransje26 wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/g15dyXX
| bloak wrote:
| Do you think that someone at the FBI, inspired by
| https://xkcd.com/2910/, will be checking the IP addresses
| of the Wikipedia editors who got there before the
| ambulances did?
| corobo wrote:
| "I can't do much else, may as well keep folks up to date" I
| guess.
|
| If they're sitting on the shore with a fully stocked rescue
| boat delaying help to post their edits, aye I'd be peeved
| too. Otherwise, might as well keep info updated as it
| becomes known.
|
| One of the beauties of the internet is that there's enough
| people willing to do the work to keep the rest of the world
| up to date with real-time information.
|
| Chances are changing tenses was just a single command
| anyway, `./pastTensify.sh "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr
| ancis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt..."` or whatever the Wikipedia
| bot command equivalent would be.
|
| Adding actual information about the event will naturally
| take a little longer as it needs writing first - they
| probably fired off the pastTensify automation while writing
| the meat and potatoes of their edit.
| card_zero wrote:
| It was somebody on their phone, not signed in, and all
| they did was change "is" to "was" in two places, leaving
| the single word edit summary "was". But thank you for
| imagining Wikipedians are so professional.
| corobo wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification.
|
| Not sure I understand the snarky turn at the end there
| but I imagine I'm just lacking whatever context you have!
| No problem :)
| LinAGKar wrote:
| How do you know it was their first instinct?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| "I know nothing about this bridge, let's check Wikipedia.
| Oh, I guess 'is a bridge' is now incorrect, I'm already
| here so let's change it."
| ssl-3 wrote:
| What was your first instinct when you learned of the event,
| and how did you respond to that instinct of yours?
|
| What was going through your head at that time?
| ulfw wrote:
| And what are they supposed to do? Pray? Rush there to help?
| (from thousands of miles away potentially) They've done
| what they can.
| mc32 wrote:
| Some people are clinical -just an item to update. For
| others it's the old "first post" mentality. It's basically
| personal mores whether something is too recent and tragic
| to update.
| nkrisc wrote:
| What should their first instinct be? Hop on an 8-hour
| flight to Baltimore, rent a car, drive to the scene and
| cross the cordon to help out?
| somat wrote:
| What impressed me was that it looks like openstreetmap shows
| the bridge as down already.
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/39.2144/-76.5279
| mkl wrote:
| Looks up there to me [1]. If you're referring to the red
| colour, zoom out - all the big highways are that colour.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/LymzwMU
| somat wrote:
| cdn cache probably,
|
| It looked like this to me.
|
| https://nl1.outband.net/image/fsk_bridge_down.jpg
| mkl wrote:
| Yes, probably tile cache on different servers. I tried
| from some random TOR exit node and got a mixture of tiles
| showing parts of the "before" and parts of the "after":
| https://imgur.com/zLAdmUc
| Symbiote wrote:
| Tiles are cached on many servers worldwide.
|
| The API shows the data was modified to mark the bridge as
| collapsed.
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| Makes sense, you want anyone following GPS to divert from
| the scene ASAP. Caching-wise, I see the updated bridge at
| zoom 15+ but the old intact bridge at zoom <=14.
| donalhunt wrote:
| OpenStreetMap editors are just as passionate as Wikipedia
| editors. :)
| nathancahill wrote:
| Nicer community and less bikeshedding.
| habi wrote:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/149163581
| throw0101c wrote:
| > Set access=no because the bridge collapsed
|
| * https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/149163336#map=15/
| 39....
|
| > Bridge collapse after being stuck by container ship - htt
| ps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/maryland-b..
| .
|
| * https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/149162713#map=18/
| 39....
|
| > Tag bridge as destroyed and ruins
|
| * https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/149168397#map=14/
| 39....
|
| * https://www.openstreetmap.org/history#map=15/39.2182/-76.
| 512...
| testfoobar wrote:
| You can look back on the livestream here to see the collision and
| collapse.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg
| qsi wrote:
| Collision is at 1:28 EDT; you'll need to go back in the
| livestream.
| Cyphase wrote:
| Here's a clip from that livestream of the collapse, clipped by
| The Guardian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVdVpd-pqcM
| coqadoodle wrote:
| The lights on the ship were going off and on, and it appeared
| to be smoking before hitting the bridge. Does not look like
| they had much control at the time.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Could it be that the power going off and on, and the smoke
| came from a panicky attempt to recover from a mistake and
| avoid hitting that bridge ?
| brazzy wrote:
| The power going off is most likely what caused the
| accident.
| jandrese wrote:
| Most likely it was engine failure which caused the steering
| to lose power and allowed the ship to be pushed by the
| current.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| The dark smoke was most likely the diesel generator firing up
| to get some steering control back
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Clip here, beginning at 1m23s, shows a (sped-up) edit of the
| ship approaching the bridge, with lights going out, on, and out
| again immediately prior to impact:
|
| <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Cs6PrRiIHEw&t=1m23s>
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Curious, is there a specific reason you put links between <
| and >?
| jamesmunns wrote:
| In markdown (or at least some flavors) that is the typical
| way of making a hyperlink actually a link. It's equivalent
| to [link](link) in markdown.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Angle brackets are used for "naked" URLs & email
| addresses in Markdown:
|
| <https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#urls-and-
| email-a...>
| Symbiote wrote:
| It was the standard way to format URLs on Usenet. GP is at
| least 40 years old.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Bless you.
| gist wrote:
| Similar using " " to quote for reply vs. >.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Carry-over from Markdown, and it appears to help HN's URL
| parser in some instances:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32745065>
| quinncom wrote:
| RFC 3986, from 2005: "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI):
| Generic Syntax": Using <> angle brackets
| around each URI is especially recommended as a
| delimiting style for a reference that contains embedded
| whitespace.
|
| <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986>
| purpleidea wrote:
| Not sure how to yt-dlp a big section of that video without
| downloading hours and hours... I found this tool but not going
| to install C# for it.
|
| https://github.com/rytsikau/ee.Yrewind/
| ohyes wrote:
| Apparently there were two different key bridges, one across the
| Potomac, another across the Patapsco. This was the Patapsco one.
| MeridianSurfer wrote:
| The other key bridge is not in Baltimore.
| ohyes wrote:
| Yeah the original cnbc article was talking about the Potomac
| which isn't near Baltimore, so I wanted to make sure no one
| else was as confused as I had been.
| cafard wrote:
| The Potomac River is pretty shallow where the Key Bridge
| crosses between the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC,
| and Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia. The
| largest facilities upstream of it are boathouses, where one may
| put in a canoe or perhaps a racing shell.
| questinthrow wrote:
| What was the ship captain's plan here? Just ram through the
| bridge?
| coqadoodle wrote:
| Appeared disabled in the video, this was not planned.
| questinthrow wrote:
| The captain was disabled or the bridge? I dont understand how
| you set a course through a bridge like that
| defrost wrote:
| A course is set through the middle, side thrusters,
| rudders, and|or engines fail or falter, and current drifts
| the ship into the bridge pylon.
|
| Ships in water tend to move and keep moving, engines and
| thrusters work to vector that motion into a _desired_
| direction - when things fail motion doesn 't cease and
| courses aren't maintained.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| The best quote from Mass Effect:
|
| Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in
| space!
| fransje26 wrote:
| Gravity is a harsh mistress..
| yieldcrv wrote:
| "this hurts you, Shephard"
| boshaus wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/OXDh1mM
|
| Here's an image of its path
| anon7725 wrote:
| The lights on the ship all go out about 5 minutes before
| impact. They come back on and appear to go out again as
| impact gets closer. It looks like the ship suffered a
| catastrophic failure that affected the controls.
| fredoralive wrote:
| The ship, most of its lights go out a minute of two before
| the collision, and it also seems to be emitting black smoke
| (from the funnels / engine exhaust?) as well.
| lmm wrote:
| Looks like the captain might have had little control and/or
| been distracted, what with the ship being on fire at the time.
| fransje26 wrote:
| It looks like it's smoking nicely, yes..
| brazzy wrote:
| The smoke was likely from the engines running at full reverse
| to avoid the collision. But the ship lost power (you can see
| its lights going out in the video) and thus the ability to
| steer.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Usually, a harbor pilot guides the vessel when entering and
| leaving the harbor.
|
| The pilot is a former captain with a lot of local experience.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot
|
| [Edit: The association of Maryland Pilots even has the bridge
| on their homepage https://www.mdpilots.com/]
|
| Did the pilot screw up? Was the pilot ignore? Did the captain
| take over? Was there a technical fault that disabled steering?
|
| There could be a lot of possible reasons for this incident.
| brazzy wrote:
| It's clearly visible in the video that the ship loses power
| twice before the collision.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| That could be an effect of aggressive attempts to regain
| control rather than the cause, though.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| In most cases the pilot is there as an advisor, the
| captain/master is still in command of the ship.
| dwightgunning wrote:
| DALI (IMO: 9697428) is a Container Ship and is sailing under the
| flag of Singapore. Her length overall (LOA) is 299.92 meters and
| her width is 48.2 meters [1].
|
| Based on the track, it appears the ship changed course slightly
| and slowed as it approached the bridge [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:28...
|
| [2]
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:2810451/zoo...
| mkl wrote:
| That's clear in the livestream video too. It's like it was
| fairly on track then changed to head straight for the pylon. A
| lot of smoke starts coming out of the funnel at the same time
| as the course change, and the ship's lights go out before
| impact.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It appears to have lost power twice before veering into the
| foundation of the bridge..
| appplication wrote:
| How often would a large ship like the is lose power? Seems
| like terribly poor timing.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Problems are disproportionately likely to show up right
| as you start out on a journey.
| appplication wrote:
| I had assumed this was coming in, but starting out would
| make more sense.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Her length overall (LOA) is 299.92 meters and her width is
| 48.2 meters [1].
|
| I get that this was probably copied from somewhere and that the
| practice has a long history but it seems antiquated to be
| referring to ships as female.
| bmitc wrote:
| Thanks for the link to the track. That's the first thing that
| I've seen that showed that I guess it's regular for these ships
| to pass under the center of this bridge. Is that correct?
|
| If so, what I'm still not understanding is why ships are
| allowed to make that passage all on their own without any
| backup like a tugboat and why the bridge doesn't have secondary
| protection of its pillars. Because with a track like that and
| lack of either of those things, a catastrophic collision seems
| inevitable.
|
| Does anyone know why the ship would make a sudden hard right
| during a sequence of power failures?
| dwightgunning wrote:
| I had a hunch this was the bridge featured in The Wire s2e1, "Ebb
| Tide". Classic McNulty; a great season opener.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebb_Tide_(The_Wire)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Greatest tv series ever. And when you rewatch it, you notice
| new things.
| jdblair wrote:
| +1 I recently watched the whole series again after I
| subscribed to HBOMax. I hadn't watched it since 2008, when I
| watched in SD using DVDs from my original Netflix
| subscription.
|
| Aside from the new story details I caught and the general
| great acting, I was struck by how the series captured a the
| technology transition going on at the time. Payphones and
| typewriters shift to classic feature phones and PCs with
| CRTs. Then camera phones enter the picture.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Season 2 of The Wire is the single greatest work of television
| I've ever seen. It's as rich as a novel, as tragic as something
| out of Shakespeare. Seriously. If anyone hasn't seen The Wire,
| do yourself a favor and give it a watch.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| It's always wild that Season 2 seems to be polarizing, it is
| very different but it's so compelling. Tragedy is really
| probably the most complete way to describe it.
|
| But yeah the short scenes of "that's my f*ing town" and the
| "they used to make steel there, no?". I know the first one
| takes place right next to the bridge because they say they
| are at Fort Armistead. I assume the latter is in much the
| same place since I thought they are looking across the river
| at Sparrow's Point.
| antisthenes wrote:
| The great thing about Season 2 of The Wire is that it works
| well both as a standalone mini-series and as a segue from
| Season 1 to Season 3.
|
| Aside from great acting and direction, of course.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Also relevant to season 2. The US seriously lacks dredging
| capacity, because we only allow US built dredges to operate on
| our ports. Only 1-3 of the top 50 highest capacity dredges in
| the world qualify. Bloomberg Odd Lots has a great episode about
| this.
|
| https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/the-1906-dredging-law-that-ma...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Was anyone driving across? I didn't notice car headlights on the
| bridge, but...
|
| edit:
|
| The guardian clip says vehicles were on the bridge.
| grubbs wrote:
| I'm reading here on local news there were multiple construction
| vehicles on the bridge when it collapsed.
| SirFredman wrote:
| You can see the construction vehicles on the bridge on te
| right of the container ship, they are standing still and are
| running flashing lights. And they go down into the river ...
| mikewarot wrote:
| I saw a few Semi Trucks pass over it about a minute before the
| collision and collapse. There were construction vehicles on the
| bridge, with flashing lights.
| nly wrote:
| You can clearly see headlights moving across it as it comes
| down.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Somehow I find it surprising how completely the bridge collapsed
| after the damage. I understand that a container ship collision is
| serious, but you could imagine a scenarios where the bridge
| slumps or buckles but doesn't just disintegrate like that. It's
| surprising that ships capable of doing this damage were probably
| regularly driving past it, and its safety as a thoroughfare
| depended entirely on those collisions not happening.
|
| Does anyone know if modern construction standards would require
| more stability after a ship collision, or is this still how we
| build bridges?
| makach wrote:
| Modern bridges are required to endure a collision. This bridge
| might be very old and not sufficiently maintained against
| current requirements.
| Reason077 wrote:
| It opened in 1977. So, oldish, but not _that_ old. Plenty of
| far older bridges around than that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt.
| ..
| loeg wrote:
| Notably predating the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway
| after a ship hit.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Neat how they made what was left of the old bridge into a
| giant fishing pier!
| hgomersall wrote:
| I'm not sure how many brand new bridges would stay up after
| having one of the piers on the main span removed.
| rob74 wrote:
| The trick is to make sure the piers are not removed. For
| example, the new Tampa Bay Sunshine Skyway Bridge (rebuilt
| after a similar disaster):
|
| > _In addition to a wider shipping lane, the channel would
| be marked by a 1/4 mi (400 m)-long series of large concrete
| barriers, and the support piers would be protected by
| massive concrete "dolphins"._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge#/media
| /...
| gregors wrote:
| Good view of them on Google maps
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sunshine+Skyway+Bridge/
| @27...
| guenthert wrote:
| Collision with what? I'm pretty sure that with a sufficiently
| massive ship sailing fast enough, one could take down any
| bridge. Hence I'd think there are limits which ship may
| approach at a given speed. Was one of those limits perhaps
| exceeded?
| boringg wrote:
| Collision means nothing without magnitude of force.
|
| A glancing blow is completely different from a direct hit.
| And the amount of Newtons behind the blow completely changes
| the outcomes. A small ship versus a loaded container ship is
| a completely different force.
|
| I doubt many bridges would take a full speed, fully loaded
| container ship directly to one of their supports and survive
| it. Certainly the most celebrated bridges have a better
| chance of surviving but I doubt any second tier, lower
| traveled routes would.
| bmitc wrote:
| Apparently this container ship was only half loaded to
| capacity. And it seems likely that a container ship would
| hit it given the vicinity of such container ships. I'm
| generally confused on this matter.
| boringg wrote:
| It hit the support completely dead on and stopped. All of
| that momentum and force went directly into the bridge.
| The pulse from that impact would have been enormous.
|
| Why would you anticipate that a container ship would have
| to hit the bridge? What about the flip side to that...
| How many bridges have never been hit by a container ship
| or alternatively how many times have an almost fully
| loaded container ship come to a dead stop after hitting a
| bridge?
| bmitc wrote:
| According to a quick search and reporting due to this
| event, apparently a quick number is a few dozen full
| collapses in the past 55 years, which doesn't seem to
| account for impacts and collisions that didn't result in
| full collapses. So that seems like a lot of bridges
| indeed, along with a lot of deaths and economic impact.
|
| The reason why I would anticipate a container ship
| hitting that bridge is because of the video we've all
| seen. It's a huge ship that is going the slowest it can
| while still retaining control over the vehicle,
| unattended, through a tight spot, close to a bridge with
| zero protection from ship collisions, and all with a ship
| design that is apparently (according to other comments)
| effectively impossible to correctly maintain and keep
| running at all times. So I think the better question is,
| why wouldn't you anticipate a collision?
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| The problem is the static scheme of the bridge.
|
| Most modern bridges are hyperstatic: if you remove one support,
| it still stands.
|
| Or at least isostatic: you remove one support or one span, and
| nothing happens to the nearest ones.
|
| This bridge was ill conceived: you remove one support or span,
| and it brings down everything like a chain that pulls down
| everything it's linked to.
|
| It's bad because the "engineer" just wanted to show off.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| You cannot put the entire weight of the 70's safety culture
| to an engineer "showing off"
|
| I bet there was a much more complex and nuanced analysis
| which included crossing ship dimensions, budget, time to
| completion, available technology, composition of the local
| seabed etc..
|
| Designing a bridge is proper engineering and not that easy.
| baq wrote:
| > Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an
| engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.
|
| ...in other words.
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| Believe me, an engineering student that sees that,
| immediately understands the problems after taking the first
| science of construction lessons.
|
| You do need need the truss at all. If the truss fails (in
| any of the three spans), it brings down two adjacents
| spans.
|
| It's just a show off.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| There's been at least 50 years, probably more like 60 or
| 70, of advances in the art (much less pedagogy) that
| those students have and the bridge engineer did not.
| Tanoc wrote:
| The '70s were also a transitional period in bridge design
| where truss bridges were being phased out in favour of
| newer types of hybrid suspension bridge. Many of the iron
| and steel bridges of the 1890s through the 1970s were later
| replaced with suspension bridges or arch span bridges
| because they used less material and could be
| architecturally adapted to the area better. So some truss
| bridges were made as much for appearance as function in
| order to compete with the futuristic hybrid suspension
| bridges like the 1967 Ponte Morandi or the 1987 replacement
| Sunshine Skyway.
| mkl wrote:
| Not all bridges are this vulnerable to a single impact. This
| one, opened 12 years earlier, has a different style and mostly
| survived a cargo ship impact:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_Bridge_disaster
| somat wrote:
| I would say the damage is about the same, The ship knocked
| down a pier and all spans connected to the pier went down.
| The difference is, on the baltimore bridge is that the spans
| are a lot longer. But all other spans(the ones nearly out of
| frame) are still standing.
| mkl wrote:
| Parts of the Francis Scott Key Bridge not connected to the
| hit pylon went down too. The beam structure above the road
| that supports the whole thing collapsed and took down other
| spans.
| somat wrote:
| Yes the entire truss section dropped. However the bridge
| is quite a few times longer than it's trussed section.
| and none of those spans dropped.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Maybe it's the extra momentum that took it over the edge,
| which if it were built in the 70s probably were designed
| with static loading in mind without the benefit of
| dynamical simulation?
| whizzter wrote:
| And that structure probably existed because the bridge
| has fewer longer spans, probably since the seabed below
| the bridge is deeper (and needs to be deeper to support
| container ships passing below).
|
| The Oresundsbron (connecting Sweden and Denmark) features
| both short segments but also with an overhand section in
| the middle for larger ships to pass through. (1) The
| great belt bridge (inside Denmark) is slightly higher but
| has the same kind of profile, one of the largest cruise
| ships barely making it under it is shown passing in the
| video below (2).
|
| I think the simple truth is that we're vulnerable to
| these kinds of accidents unless we build far far sturdier
| bridges, but at these scales to allow passage of ships of
| these sizes the cost would just make many bridge projects
| prohibitably expensive.
|
| 1: https://www.norden.org/sites/default/files/styles/cont
| ent_si...
|
| 2:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=j1Cs0C8LkeU
| Symbiote wrote:
| The Oresundsbron is a bridge _and_ a tunnel, and although
| it 's not required most ships choose to cross over the
| tunnel rather than under the bridge.
|
| I was curious about Zealand's other connection, the Great
| Belt Fixed Link:
|
| > The West Bridge has been struck by sea traffic twice.
| While the link was still under construction on 14
| September 1993, the ferry M/F Romso drifted off course in
| bad weather and hit the West Bridge. At 19:17 on 3 March
| 2005, the 3,500-ton freighter MV Karen Danielsen crashed
| into the West Bridge 800 metres from Funen. All traffic
| across the bridge was halted, effectively cutting Denmark
| in two. The bridge was re-opened shortly after midnight,
| after the freighter was pulled free and inspectors had
| found no structural damage to the bridge.
|
| > The East Bridge has so far been in the clear, although
| on 16 May 2001, the bridge was closed for 10 minutes as
| the Cambodian 27,000-ton bulk carrier Bella was heading
| straight for one of the anchorage structures. The ship
| was deflected by a swift response from the navy.
|
| In Danish [2], but it looks like there's someone always
| monitoring the sea traffic, and able to close the bridge
| at very short notice -- I assume with the red flashing
| lights which are used to close motorways in emergencies.
|
| > The eastern end through the Great Belt is international
| water, and therefore even the largest ships must be able
| to sail under the bridge. The 254 meter high pylons are
| therefore dimensioned so that they should be able to
| withstand the approach of tankers of 250,000 tonnes dead
| weight (DWT) at a speed of 10 knots. Artificial islands
| protect the anchor blocks as well as the three outermost
| piers on the Zealand side and the two outermost ones on
| the Sprogo side.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Belt_Bridge
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20090116051425/http://ing
| .dk/art...
| fl7305 wrote:
| Oresundsbron is claimed to be designed to be resistant
| against ships hitting it. They have placed artificial
| underwater reefs around the pylons. The pylons themselves
| can also take quite a beating.
| Kye wrote:
| The twin towers were designed to take a hit from an
| airliner and survive[0]. Sometimes even the best design
| fails when reality crashes into it.
|
| [0] They expected fuel leaking to cause a devastating
| fire, but not that the fire would weaken the structure
| enough to cause the cascade failure that brought the
| towers down. https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?da
| te=19930227&slug...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They survived for roughly an hour after the airliners
| hit. That hour let roughly 40,000 people make it out.
|
| The towers failed, in the end, but withstanding the
| initial hit mattered a lot.
| Kye wrote:
| That's great, but the topic is engineering things to
| survive serious damage, period. Not just long enough for
| people to escape before it succumbs. A failed structure
| is still a failed structure with all the socioeconomic
| trouble that entails.
| fl7305 wrote:
| You're mixing up two different things.
|
| If the design requirement for the twin towers was "be
| fire resistant enough to let most people out of the
| building", then I'd say they met that requirement, right?
|
| If the design requirement for a bridge is "continue
| operating at normal capacity", then that is a very
| different requirement.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "Failed" isn't the binary you're trying to make it.
|
| Yes, the towers failed to survive serious damage. But the
| 40,000 more deaths would have been "socioeconomic
| trouble", in spades. Even by your own chosen measure, the
| survival for an hour was a partial success.
| fl7305 wrote:
| Sure, precautions might not work as well as intended.
|
| But my comment was in regards to having to build a really
| expensive bridge to make it crash resistant. I pointed
| out that you can instead build a cheap flimsy bridge and
| put the protection in the water around the pylons.
|
| My impression is that the Baltimore bridge had no such
| extra protection (?) In that case, it's not really "the
| best design", right?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Hobart learned its lesson. You can't drive over the bridge
| when heavy ships sail under it.
| vertis wrote:
| I fell down reading about all the ships that have hit
| bridges, and this is probably the most practical solution
| for a lot of scenarios.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Yes, but Hobart is tiny so this rarely happens and
| relatively few people are impacted when it does.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Seems like a fair few people are going to be impacted
| permanently in Baltimore because of this.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| "Permanently" what? the harbor will be cleared, probably
| sooner than later, and there will be a new bridge/tunnel
| built in a few years. Like that's not permanent.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| The deceased and their community.
| irjustin wrote:
| This situation is terrible, but to your specific question:
|
| Anyone can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to barely
| make it stand.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I like this quote. We have a medieval bridge near to our
| house (1000 years old perhaps), it's incredibly solidly
| built, but could you call it well-engineered?
|
| It's a subtle distinction that I don't think many in the
| digital realm quite grasp either i.e. far too many over-
| engineered technical solutions for features and products that
| aren't even desired
| lukan wrote:
| "but could you call it well-engineered"
|
| If it is still standing after 1000 years, I would say yes.
| You cannot build a bridge out of stones with bad
| engineering - it would collapse under its own weight.
|
| edit: does "well engineered" now means over engineered to
| some?
| jack_riminton wrote:
| "If it is still standing after 1000 years, I would say
| yes" but what if they included far more material in areas
| where it wasn't needed, skimped on other areas and it
| fell down tomorrow? It's almost a philosophical question,
| and it's true that the bridge builders happened across a
| solid design by accident.
|
| But I think the true definition of engineering has to
| encompass a level of efficiency through design,
| calculation and rationalization. In other words, echoing
| what the original commenter said, including only what is
| barely necessary.
| lukan wrote:
| "and it's true that the bridge builders happened across a
| solid design by accident"
|
| Or by experience and learning from other sucessful
| bridges? Stone bridges were not new in the year 1000.
|
| There is a roman bridge that was allmost completely
| surviving all this time, till it was blown up in WW2:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Pietra_(Verona)
|
| If they wanted a cheap solution, they would have used
| wood. But wood does not last a 1000 years.
|
| Personally I salute anyone, who can build something that
| lasts that long.
|
| "including only what is barely necessary."
|
| And "barely necessary" in solid engineering includes lots
| of safety margins. Not barely standing.
|
| And yes, that includes not using more than you need,
| because the more material you use, the heavier your
| bridge is -> the greater are the forces on the structure
| itself even with no one passing over it.
|
| There are some fun games out there on various plattforms,
| google "bridge builder"
|
| Not a scientific simulation of course, but they do show
| the concept.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _But I think the true definition of engineering has to
| encompass a level of efficiency through design,
| calculation and rationalization._
|
| The 1000 year medieval bridge we're talking about could
| have been an efficient design _for its time_.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > only what is barely necessary.
|
| But then one must make clear: necessary for what.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I like to tell people that all engineering is about
| tradeoffs.
|
| People who engineered bridges during Roman Empire had
| different tradeoffs to consider than people who were
| building bridges in 20th century.
|
| Standing for a thousand years is rarely an ultimate goal
| when engineering a bridge although it is possible that
| Romans planned for longer timescales than us.
|
| If we decided to build like Romans did, there would
| likely be very little infrastructure and many structures
| would simply be impossible to construct.
| lukan wrote:
| "If we decided to build like Romans did, there would
| likely be very little infrastructure"
|
| Why? The romans build lots of infrastructure. Roads,
| sewage, irrigation, .. and they used the materials and
| technics of their time.
|
| Can't we really do better today, with all our advanced
| technology?
|
| Or can't we, because everything has to be cheap, cheap,
| cheap?
|
| I mean, the romans used slaves. That is cheap. But we
| have machines.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How much population did the Romans build for? How much
| weight were the Romans subjecting their structures to,
| and at what acceleration/deceleration?
|
| Do you know the movements of the supply and demand curves
| of the materials required since Roman times?
|
| These types of hypotheticals are a waste of time, and
| only serve to illustrate hubris, as if something as
| complicated as comparing Roman construction and resources
| to modern day construction and resources could be
| possible.
| lukan wrote:
| "as if something as complicated as comparing Roman
| construction and resources to modern day construction and
| resources could be possible."
|
| Well, one can compare the results.
|
| Personally I like things that are build solid and can
| last a 1000 years.
|
| But I don't think I said the romans build better. They
| just had a different intention: long lasting.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Can't we really do better today, with all our advanced
| technology?
|
| You implied a whole host of things with this statement,
| and considering the topic of this thread, also ramming a
| Roman bridge with a fully loaded modern day cargo ship.
|
| The point is there are so many moving parameters, it is
| nonsensical to take 1 result of 1 technique from 1 point
| of time and use that as a basis for what one can expect
| at other points in time.
| lukan wrote:
| Erm, that was just directed at this point, which I
| quoted:
|
| "If we decided to build like Romans did, there would
| likely be very little infrastructure"
| stonogo wrote:
| The bridge has lasted a thousand years because nobody is
| driving 18-wheelers over it. It has nothing to do with
| the intentions of the builder.
| lukan wrote:
| "It has nothing to do with the intentions of the builder"
|
| Why not? They did not have the intention to make the
| bridge resistant to such heavy loads, as that was not a
| use case at that time.
|
| They had the intention to make a bridge to last as long
| as possible for the traffic at their time. And they
| surely succeded with this.
|
| Now whether they also could have made a bridge that
| resists 18 wheelers for 1000 years, well, I don't know.
| stonogo wrote:
| This is survivorship bias in action. They intended to
| build a bridge. That is all we can infer from the fact
| that a bridge exists. That they used available materials
| and the bridge was not abused by subsequent usage outside
| its design spec is not proof of any specific intention on
| the part of the builder. That exists only in your head.
| It's like assuming dinosaurs died in specific spots with
| the intent that their bones petrify and fossilize. You're
| reading too much into not enough facts.
| lukan wrote:
| Maybe, but lots of roman buildings endured the time in
| much better shape, than many buildings that were build
| after them. Have you seen some of them in front of you? I
| have and I am impressed. (I am in italy right now to go
| look at some more).
|
| Also we know a bit more about the romans than just their
| bridges.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| This is an excellent point, the tradeoffs are specific to
| the time, place and needs of the builders
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > could you call it well-engineered?
|
| What is well engineered depends on the goals and the
| limitations of the state of the art at the time. I would
| say that a thousand year old bridge might count as well
| engineered if the goal was a bridge that had a low total
| lifetime cost.
| boringg wrote:
| Why are you throwing shade at civil structural engineering?
|
| Do all bridges we build need to be able to withstand the
| force of an entire shipping container bridge hitting it at
| high speed? What planet should an engineer think that a
| shipping container has managed to veer off course so badly
| that they hit a bridge at full speed, fully loaded? That is a
| sad and significant outlier event.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| This is a common joke in engineering.
|
| It's not meant to be an insult, but a compliment noting
| that engineers know what the essential parts of the bridge
| are
| boringg wrote:
| I suspected it might be but I couldn't tell from the
| post. There is a lot of self deprecating humor amongst
| engineers / engineering programs.
| somat wrote:
| I would guess none. No bridge span could survive complete loss
| of it's supporting abutment. Some bridges are engineered to
| survive partial loss. For example if the left side goes the
| right side will hold it up. But from the video the ship looks
| like it took out the entire supporting structure.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Why would slumping or buckling but not-quite-collapsing be a
| functionally better outcome than complete failure? In both
| cases, the sheer size of the physical changes is going to lead
| to forces that humans won't survive, so there's no benefit
| there. In both cases, the bridge is going to have to be
| completely demolished before rebuilding, so there's no benefit
| there.
|
| A bridge that could stand the loss of a single support pier
| without any significant collapse would obviously be preferable
| -- but that's a big ask. I'm not a structural engineer, but I
| am aware of scaling laws [1] and it feels to me that those
| scaling laws are going to mean that increasing the margin of
| safety by _x_ is going to increase costs by _x^n_. For a
| project like this one, where cost was apparently the deciding
| factor over a tunnel, that matters.
|
| [1]
| https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/609.ral5q.fall04/L...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Why would slumping or buckling but not-quite-collapsing be a
| functionally better outcome than complete failure?
|
| Well for starters, there's a better chance of less (or
| ideally no) people forced to get their feet wet and go
| missing or die from drowning or hypothermia.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| The specific point I'm making (in the sentence following
| the one you quoted) is that no, there is not a better
| chance of those things. If a bridge of this size is going
| to fail in any significant way, it is going to lead to loss
| of life.
|
| The broader point is that attempts to blame the bridge
| designers here are misplaced. It really isn't reasonable to
| have hoped that they could design a structure that could
| cope with this kind of failure, within the cost constraints
| that they had. And cost constraints were a real thing for
| the designers of this particular bridge.
| archi42 wrote:
| You could try to avoid collisions with barriers, or make the
| bridge fail differently (only a few spans), or make it tolerant
| to a single support failing. But you need a pretty beefy steel
| beam to survive a direct hit by... Uh... 200,000t(??) traveling
| even at a slow jogging pace. (And then it transfers the energy
| into the rest of the bridge, which will very much not like it).
|
| I guess we can be happy failure like this is rare, and that the
| bridge was not busy: reports indicate 13 cars, and about 7
| persons still missing. This could be so much worse.
|
| The best way to think about measures is after we know the full
| chain of events that have lead to this.
| bagels wrote:
| Some other bridges have barriers around, but not connecting
| to the pylons.
| Kye wrote:
| Those are great for little boats like one of those
| superyachts. They become dominoes that hit before a boat
| like this: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9697428
| archi42 wrote:
| Absolutely. 116851 long tons deadweight, which the Google
| info box says includes everything (busy now, so can't
| check in detail). That's 120,000,000 kg, so a little bit
| less than I guessed. Now looking at 10km/h or 6.2mi/h or
| 2.78m/s, that's enough to come up with a big E for E =
| 1/2 * m * v2. The momentum p = m * v is also rather
| unpleasant. If the momentum was suddenly transferred into
| my 2,000 kg car (e.g. if the ship hit my car), I could do
| my work trip in about 1s, though that's only a few times
| times faster than the ISS (which travels at 7660 m/s).
|
| [I'm very busy, so hopefully I didn't forget/add a few 0s
| by accident. Anyone feel free to correct me if I did.]
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| Most bridges nowadays (say last century) depend on a careful
| balance of forces that are transferred through a chain of
| members in tension and compression.
|
| When any piece in the chain of those forces breaks, the entire
| structure loses ability to transfer forces and breaks.
|
| This arrangement is what allows us to build these structures in
| the first place. There is careful calculations of forces and
| risks and allowance for margin for error and unexpected events.
| But, unfortunately, in many cases those do not include ramming
| things with a large container ship...
| armchairdweller wrote:
| Thanks! So why are huge--ass container ships allowed to
| navigate underneath fragile public bridges with single points
| of failure? The not unlikely worst case is that the ship is
| out of control for some reason...
| oliviabenson wrote:
| We notice these type of accidents because they're so rare.
| 5k+ people die each year because of large trucks on the
| road, by comparison, boats and bridges are very safe --
| that's why it's allowed.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because bridges over harbors are quite common an incidents
| like this are rare.
| mcv wrote:
| The Dutch ports of both Amsterdam and Rotterdam have no
| bridges at all. It's all tunnels. I think that's the best
| way to go; the least chance of conflict between road and
| water traffic.
| keenmaster wrote:
| Often in America the government waits for something to
| fail miserably before engaging in a high effort high cost
| activity that requires a lot of coordination and public
| buy-in.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Wow.
|
| Random ship hits a bridge.
|
| Shakes fist at sky "the government".
| Muromec wrote:
| But that's what you do with random events -- create
| policies to prevent them from happening, lowering the
| incidence rate and minimizing damage once it occurs.
| Which is exactly what government and laws are all about.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That is a generous reading of the parent comment.
|
| It sounded much more like a common trope, "the do-nothing
| government just lets things fail, doesn't take action
| until something fails".
| etempleton wrote:
| The amount of arm chair quarterbacking here is
| astounding. Reddit has a more nuanced conversation than
| HN right now.
|
| A bridge got hit by a container ship at speed and folks
| here are talking about this like the bridge was not up to
| standard, or why there was a bridge there at all when
| they know nothing about the locale. I am not a structural
| engineer, but I am going to go ahead and guess that not
| much would still be standing from a direct hit from a
| container ship. And from observation bridges like this
| exist all over the world and don't regularly get struck
| by container ships.
|
| It was a freak accident.
|
| If we want to point fingers or question things, perhaps
| if anything the question is why the container ship lost
| power repeatedly? Was this a known issue before leaving
| port?
| mcv wrote:
| > A bridge got hit by a container ship at speed and folks
| here are talking about this like the bridge was not up to
| standard, or why there was a bridge there at all when
| they know nothing about the locale.
|
| You're right, I don't. But I do know there are other
| locales where they seem to explicitly avoid bridges
| crossing heavy ocean traffic.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| German Wikipedia has an article on ship deflectors. What
| is says there is that ship collisions were viewed an an
| inevitable hazard until the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine
| Skyway Bridge in Tampa. That was 45 years ago.
| bombcar wrote:
| Trying to search for "ship deflectors" or whatever just
| brings up pages and pages of Star Wars shields and such
| in English.
|
| I know they exist, and perhaps after this they'll exist a
| bit more.
| bombcar wrote:
| Tunnels can have other issues:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tunnel_fires and
| given American drivers I think I'll take my chances with
| the big old boats.
| mopenstein wrote:
| All roads should be underground! What if a plane crashes
| into a surface road? Or a meteor? Somebody think of the
| children!
| astrodust wrote:
| After making all roads underground: "Tunnel collapses are
| killing all our children! Let's make all roads above
| ground!"
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Not unlikely? Can you point us to all the other times this
| has happened? You must know of several given your knowledge
| of how obviously likely this is.
| rpeden wrote:
| It's not especially common, but the Sunshine Skyway
| Bridge in Tampa Bay is a famous example. Similar
| circumstances - it collapsed after being hit by a ship.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The replacement bridge in Tampa famously added "dolphins"
| which are bumpers in the water to protect the bridge
| pylons.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| that collapsed almost 40 years ago, which really
| emphasizes it's flat out uncommon, no "buts" needed.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Downvoted for unkindness towards internet stranger.
| armchairdweller wrote:
| When has "nothing will happen as long as we can carefully
| navigate our massive vessels around these critical
| pillars" ever been a trustable safety measure? Over the
| long term shit like this _will_ happen if it the
| possibility _that_ it happens is not excluded by other
| measures.
|
| This is a public bridge 5 years in the making and who
| knows how long in planning, and people have been
| extremely lucky that it collapsed at 3am and not in the
| middle of the day. It doesn't matter at all how unlikely
| this is in a given time frame if the impact if it happens
| at any point in time is catastrophic.
| rpeden wrote:
| Because the Port of Baltimore is a very major port, and not
| allowing ships under it really isn't an option.
|
| Vertical clearance for ship traffic might have been the
| reason this kind of bridge was built in the first place.
| Otherwise, something lower and more causeway-like might
| have been sufficient.
| mcv wrote:
| If it's a very major port, they can afford to make it a
| tunnel.
| adestefan wrote:
| There already are two tunnels for I-95 and I-895 under
| the port.
| mcv wrote:
| Then why is this one a bridge? Why not go all the way and
| make this a tunnel too?
| xav0989 wrote:
| Mostly to have a hazmat route around the city (HAZMAT
| trucks aren't allowed in the tunnels) and because bridges
| are cheaper than tunnels. They needed a third crossing
| because the traffic warranted it.
| mcv wrote:
| > Mostly to have a hazmat route around the city (HAZMAT
| trucks aren't allowed in the tunnels)
|
| That is a very interesting point I hadn't considered at
| all. Price is an obvious point, but I hadn't considered
| hazmat.
|
| It does make me wonder how hazmat traffic is handled
| around Amsterdam. I think they are allowed in some
| tunnels here.
| tremon wrote:
| Most highway tunnels (including the Coentunnel and
| Zeeburgertunnel on the A10 ring road around Amsterdam)
| are category C tunnels, which means some hazmat allowed
| depending on the nature of the materials, the quality of
| the containment, and the volume transported. Notable
| exceptions are the Schipholtunnel (category A, fewer
| restrictions) near the airport and the Arenatunnel
| (category E, severely restricted) under the stadium.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| HAZMAT can go the other way around the city on 695. My
| understanding is that the main issue was cost.
| _bohm wrote:
| > Bids for construction of the proposed Outer Harbor
| Tunnel were opened in July 1970, but price proposals were
| substantially higher than the engineering estimates.[11]
| Officials drafted alternative plans, including a four-
| lane bridge, which was approved by the General Assembly
| in April 1971.[12][13]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(B
| alt...
| Kye wrote:
| Why does anyone use fragile asphalt (20 years) for busy
| roads when engineered concrete lasts 50 or more? Because
| the better option costs more.
|
| This was a big point of contention when a local town
| announced it was replacing the failing asphalt on the
| section with the most traffic with slabs of concrete. [0]
| People complained about the price. Meanwhile, over a
| decade on, nearby asphalt laid with the same renewal
| project is already cracking while the busy main
| thoroughfare remains undisrupted by road work.
|
| It's hard to persuade people that long-term investment is
| worthwhile.
|
| [0] PDF page 10 (print 17): https://www.dot.ga.gov/Partne
| rSmart/Public/Documents/publica...
| etempleton wrote:
| The tunnel and the bridge run parallel. Tunnels are not
| suitable for all types of traffic.
| mezzman wrote:
| However hazardous cargo is not allowed in tunnels so
| bridges like this one are the only way hazmat can be
| transported over water crossings.
| maxerickson wrote:
| On the news this morning a commentator made it sound like
| that rule was imposed after 9/11.
|
| It makes sense to me that cargo would be restricted, and
| it's bizarre that it would be related to terrorism (an
| additional rule isn't going to prevent an attack...).
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It's still a sensible rule. As we see with this incident
| rare events do happen.
| acdha wrote:
| Tunnels are far more expensive - the 1.5 mile 4 lane Fort
| McHenry tunnel was like $750M vs. $140M for the 1.6 mile
| 4 lane Key bridge, although adjusted for inflation that's
| probably more like $750M vs $320M.
|
| The underlying problem here is that automobiles are
| inherently inefficient so you either get epic traffic
| jams or have to massively overbuild capacity, forcing the
| engineers to deliver as many lanes as they can for the
| budget.
| yunwal wrote:
| How expensive is this accident to the city? Likely
| billions, right?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Your point is correct: if they knew the accident was
| going to happen today, they might have changed their
| behavior.
|
| Unfortunately, nobody who knew it would happen today
| warned anybody.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, but there's a difference between what people will
| pay in advance to prevent one of many low probability
| catastrophic failures and what they'll think was
| worthwhile for someone else to have paid to prevent the
| one which actually happened.
|
| Those calculations are really hard: say they had built a
| tunnel, what are the odds of the same number of people
| dying in a fire after someone crashes into another car?
| Would we have needed to spend any money at all if more
| people had used railroad alternatives to driving and such
| an expensive bridge or tunnel was not justified on
| traffic grounds?
| _heimdall wrote:
| This works fine until there's a story of issues with a
| tunnel, then we say we should have built a bridge.
| c5karl wrote:
| The Patapsco is much wider here than at the locations of
| the two tunnels. It would have been a much bigger and
| more expensive project to build a tunnel that long.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| In addition to the Hazmat issue mentioned below, tunnels
| have a bad record when fires break out inside them. E.g.
| the Kaprun disaster [0] which killed 150 people, and the
| Gotthard Road Tunnel [1] fire, after which the use of
| large vehicles was constrained.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprun_disaster
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Road_Tunnel#20
| 01_coll...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Vertical Clearance for bridges around ports is the method
| used around the world. Of course, also tunnels. But
| building tall bridges for access is very common.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Because the Port of Baltimore is a very major port, and
| not allowing ships under it really isn't an option.
|
| It is now a very large port that is completely closed off
| from the sea.
|
| And two sides of the city no longer linked
|
| The damage from this accident is only beginning.
|
| Even if loss of control of a large container ship was
| considered in the design of the city, port, and that
| particular bridge, ships were not even close to the order
| of magnitude of mass of today's ships.
|
| And, it lost power at almost exactly the worst moment.
| What are the odds?
| Diederich wrote:
| > And, it lost power at almost exactly the worst moment.
| What are the odds?
|
| I don't know, but I suspect we don't hear much about all
| the times power is lost at moments that are less than the
| worst.
| toss1 wrote:
| EXACTLY!! If it happens often, and they just restart
| because it's no big deal in the ocean, we wouldn't hear
| about it.
|
| Of course, it seems that a high(er) frequency of failures
| should be taken into account for zones where it is
| critical, such as in port. I just saw a few days ago that
| a ship docking took out a couple of cargo cranes (sadly,
| badly injuring a crane operator); didn't seem like a
| power outage, more of a misjudged steering.
| 317070 wrote:
| If bridges and container ships indeed do not go together
| (something I don't necessarily agree with), you probably
| want to take away the public bridge and continue to let
| ships go by. This is economically speaking for the area.
| Car traffic is just not very efficient in the comparison
| between the two.
|
| Edit: of course there are a ton of other solutions here as
| well. I am disagreeing with the parent that it is the cars
| which should get to stay and the container ships which have
| to move.
| mcv wrote:
| You can have smaller container ships. Or have the port
| outside the bridge. Or indeed replace the bridge with a
| tunnel, or a better bridge.
|
| Amsterdam has no bridges at all crossing the IJ on the
| west side (where sea-going ships come from) and only a
| single bridge on the east side (though there's often talk
| of adding another). Everything is tunnels.
|
| Rotterdam has bridges (including the famous Erasmusbrug),
| but only east of the port area. To the west, everything
| is tunnels. And the largest ships don't even come close
| to the city center, but dock at the Maasvlakte out at
| sea.
|
| For both cities, ports have constantly moved closer to
| the sea.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| You don't even need to run it as a tunnel the entire way
| through - Chesapeake Bay has vehicular traffic routed
| through a combination bridge/tunnel, using tunnels to
| span the two major shipping channels crossed by the
| complex.
| mcv wrote:
| The A10 ring in Amsterdam does the same on the east side.
| The west is all tunnel, the east is half tunnel half
| bridge.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Baltimore has been in a steady state of decline as long
| as I can recall. Industry has constantly moved away.
|
| https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/as-residents-leave-
| balti...
|
| >"There's a lot of people staying [in those cities] and
| we want to be sure they're not left with an excess of
| infrastructure that's impossible to maintain," he said.
| "So what do we do about it?"
| robswc wrote:
| Don't know why this is controversial.
|
| I lived in the NOVA area for more than a decade and each
| visit to Baltimore (every few years) was more depressing.
| Of course, that's anecdotal but I'll stand by it.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Maybe they felt it was off-topic? Industry has been
| moving away since the 1950s. Today I read that container
| traffic has increased over the past couple of years.
|
| It is hard not to feel a sense of tragedy if you know
| something about the place. It is written all over the
| city. The blocks and blocks of boarded up row houses
| speak for themselves. Now they are tearing them down.
| Maybe that is for the best, but it doesn't seem like a
| win.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| > out of control for some reason...
|
| I think the whole ship went dark for a moment. That may
| have had an impact on the rudder, and then some strong
| current and/or wind, pushing it sideways.
|
| Couldn't see tug-boats.
| dgritsko wrote:
| Was watching CNN around 6AM EDT, they had a reporter on
| scene who mentioned wind "whipping across" the harbor.
| This was in reference to the potential survivability of
| the freezing cold water, but it seems likely it could
| have been a factor in pushing the ship off course as
| well.
| layer8 wrote:
| To be able to reach the port. You could argue that such
| bridges shouldn't be built in front of ports, but the
| public also doesn't like having to drive long detours, and
| the likelihood of an incident like this one is very low.
| roenxi wrote:
| It is worth observing that this bridge seems to have 2 pylons
| and one of them collapsed. The failure seems comprehensible
| after that - you can see in the video how the balances came
| apart, there is nothing to hold the left side up so it falls
| and then remainder of the bridge tried to rotate around the
| remaining pylon and failed.
| mcv wrote:
| It's no surprise that the entire bridge collapses after a
| pylon collapses. What surprises me is that the pylon
| collapses. I'd expect those to be extremely solid, with
| tons of padding. But with ships getting bigger and bigger,
| I guess there's a limit to what you can account for.
| xienze wrote:
| Ships are hundreds of thousands of tons in weight and the
| momentum acts as a force multiplier. Plus it hit the
| pylon dead center, which is the worst case scenario. It's
| not terribly surprising.
|
| I think there's also an underlying expectation that any
| competent ship captain would at least be able to see that
| they're on a collision course with the pylon well ahead
| of time and be able to compensate. Which obviously didn't
| happen in this case.
| ponector wrote:
| There is another video where we can see two power outage
| occurred. Ship was uncontrollable but with enormous
| amount of inertia.
|
| I'm sure captain tried to do anything he can to avoid
| collision.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| The trajectory of the ship seemed near perfect right up
| until just before the bridge where I suspect it
| experience it's mechanical issue.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Interestingly, a surprising number of ship-ship
| collisions occur due to an unnecessary last minute
| evasive-action manoeuvre between ships that weren't
| actually on a collision course in the first place.
| There's a whole section devoted to this in the
| outstanding book 'Normal Accidents' by Charles Perrow.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Case of, they are built strong, but not that strong.
|
| A container ship has huge inertia, I don't think any
| bridge could be built to take a direct hit like that.
| delfinom wrote:
| Container ships of yesteryear are also many times smaller
| than modern ships.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| On a long enough timeline we all get rammed by a container
| ship.
|
| I would be interested to know some calculations with factors
| like: expected bridge lifetime, chance of being rammed per
| year, cost of making supports strong enough plus an extra
| safety margin to survive maximum ramming force, cost of
| having major commercial shipping route unusable for an
| extended period.
| Retric wrote:
| Bridges only last for roughly 50 years. Considering such
| collisions are rare enough to make the news as a memorable
| event you can workout for yourself that the odds are quite
| low over a bridges lifespan.
|
| They are designed to withstand smaller boat impacts because
| they occur relatively frequently, but cost vs benefit on
| rare events that are difficult to mitigate is quite
| different.
| yosame wrote:
| Do you mean 50 years without maintenance? I would be
| shocked if major bridges weren't designed to last
| indefinitely.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Nothing lasts indefinitely...
| mango7283 wrote:
| I can think of at least 5 famous bridges that are way
| older than 50 years...
| Retric wrote:
| Sure, and there's 100's of thousands of replaced bridges
| that don't immediately spring to mind.
|
| Though to be clear designed to last 50 years isn't the
| same as saying it will only last exactly 50 years, or
| that theirs nothing you can do to extend a bridges
| lifespan if it's replacement is running a little late.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If it is a famous bridge, it seems possible that they've
| done some special extra maintenance, replace more wear-
| and-tear bits that would normally fail. Eventually you
| probably get the tourist attraction of Theseus.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Depends on the bridge. Steel and concrete bridges can
| last for at least 100 years. But it depends on the
| environment, its expected use, the construction, design.
| Some famous major bridges failed early due to poor design
| or poor construction, but many still fail due to lack of
| maintenance.
|
| The average age of a bridge in the USA is 43 years. But
| we also have an epidemic of unmaintained bridges.
|
| No bridge made today is designed to last indefinitely.
| Many different forces will degrade the bridge over time,
| even with maintenance. Steel stresses weaken it over
| time. Concrete weathers over time due to salt, chemicals,
| water, wind, and the steel reinforcements tend to corrode
| eventually.
|
| Stone bridges may last for an exceptionally long time,
| but their weight and expense makes them only useful in
| limited applications, typically as small rail overpasses.
| Ones that were designed for horse and buggy end up slowly
| failing as heavier trucks and cars in traffic weaken
| them.
|
| The same fate lies for timber bridges. When well
| maintained they can last for 75 years, but it's expensive
| and requires certain skills. They were also mostly
| designed before heavier cars and trucks, and for less
| traffic. Most famous covered bridges today are being
| closed to traffic due to increased wear.
| btilly wrote:
| According to https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/, the
| federal government oversees more than 610,000 bridges in
| the USA. There are a lot of unmaintained small bridges.
| But I'd hope that the major ones get more attention.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Here's a list of major bridges that need attention (&
| aren't getting it):
| https://artbabridgereport.org/state/ranking/top-bridges
|
| FHWA provides up to $7 Billion in assistance in
| maintaining bridges. But it would take at least $125
| Billion to begin dealing with the structurally deficient
| bridges in the USA, according to the ASCE Infrastructure
| Report Card[1].
|
| Add to this the fact that many bridges in the US are
| privately owned, and it's the responsibility of the
| bridge owner to maintain them. But guess what's not
| profitable for a private enterprise? Maintaining bridges.
| Despite this, train derailments and property damage
| continue every year due to unmaintained bridge and train
| infrastructure.
|
| The executive has proposed funding for repairs, but as
| usual, it's not enough[2]. So far they've gotten almost
| half that number of bridges repaired, and pledged another
| $300M,[3] which is still just a drop in the bucket of
| what's needed of the backlog; it doesn't address all the
| new maintenance that will be needed each year.
|
| According to the American Road & Transportation Builders
| Association, there are 167 million crossings on 42,400
| bridges rated in poor condition. [4]
|
| [1] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-
| item/bridges-infras... [2]
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/biden-has-plan-fix-
| amer... [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
| room/statements-releases... [4]
| https://artbabridgereport.org/congressional/map
| ajb wrote:
| Personally I'm in favour of government maintaining stuff,
| but
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Bridge_Foundation
| has maintained most of London's bridges privately for
| nearly three quarters of a millennia so I wouldn't say it
| can't be done.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying we
| specifically fail to hold private industry accountable in
| the US. So we get things like poisonous runoff from
| agriculture and industrial production, insanely slow and
| outdated train lines, privately owned bridges that fail
| and cause injury, property damage and traffic jams,
| massive wildfires causing property damage and loss of
| life from unmaintained utility infrastructure, and
| worldwide banking crises, among other things.
|
| Is it impossible for these things to stop happening? No,
| not at all. But it's probably not going to stop, in this
| country, because we let private industry get away with
| whatever they want. If this were the UK the story would
| be very different.
| b33j0r wrote:
| Interested in this claim, because it sounds about right,
| except that I can't name a bridge constructed in the past
| 50 years.
|
| The bridges we can all name are pushing 100+ right?
| rrdharan wrote:
| New York City has had two major recent new bridge
| replacements that probably about 20M people can name: the
| Mario Cuomo (formerly Tappan Zee) and the Kosciuszko
| bridge.
|
| I'd argue the Bayonne Bridge raising kinda counts since
| it was almost a rebuild and more impressive in many ways
| since it stayed open the whole time.
|
| Meanwhile in the San Francisco Bay Area they replaced the
| Bay Bridge...
| mannykannot wrote:
| The Tappan Zee bridge certainly wasn't built with the
| intention of replacing it after 65 years. Nor,
| fortunately, was the George Washington bridge.
| rrdharan wrote:
| Agreed I was just addressing the parent poster question
| of whether anyone can name a major bridge built in the
| last fifty years...
| 0110101001 wrote:
| > Started on the cheap during the Korean War, the Tappan
| Zee was deliberately built to last just 50 years.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/nyregion/a-bridge-
| that-ha...
| mannykannot wrote:
| I can't argue with that!
| colatkinson wrote:
| The old Tappan Zee was basically a perfect encapsulation
| of "dumb midcentury infrastructure decisions."
|
| 1. Built to last only 50 years to save on materials (as
| the other commenter noted).
|
| 2. Built over literally the widest possible part of the
| Hudson because the governor got in a pissing contest with
| the Port Authority and wanted all the tolls to go to the
| state, which wouldn't have been the case had it been
| built like 2 miles south where the river is narrower.
|
| 3. Designed with zero redundancy, such that a "critical
| fracture could make the bridge fail completely because
| its supports couldn't transfer the structure's load to
| other supports." [0]
|
| So yeah if we're being real, 50 years was quite
| optimistic.
|
| The new Tappan Zee is apparently supposed to last 100
| years, though given the incidents with substandard
| materials being used, as well as ever-increasing traffic,
| who knows.
|
| That said, driving over a bridge 10 years past its
| planned EOL and being able to look down directly to the
| water through gaps in the concrete was always a nice
| feature though -- who needs coffee when you've got that
| to get your heart rate up!
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappan_Zee_Bridge_(195
| 5%E2%80%...
| njarboe wrote:
| "dumb midcentury infrastructure decisions."
|
| Keeping in mind that mid-century Japan and Germany were
| in ruins and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of
| urban centers very much at the top of many people minds.
| 50 years may have seemed an optimistic survival rate of
| built structures at the time.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The _eastern_ span of the Bay Bridge, which had
| previously been a cantilever bridge, which was damaged
| during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, and shown to have
| quite obvious seismic deficiencies.
|
| Its replacement is a self-anchored suspension bridge.
|
| The original _western_ span, actually a double suspension
| bridge, remains standing, as constructed in 1933, 91
| years ago.
| b33j0r wrote:
| So this detail... that is where my misconception arose.
| Thanks!
| kijiki wrote:
| The western span had substantial seismic remediation
| applied in 2000-2001.
| lowercased wrote:
| The Francis Scott Key bridge - the subject of this story
| - was finished in 1977, and took about 5 years, so...
| much of it was constructed in the last 50 years. ???
| Retric wrote:
| How many bridges, such as highway overpasses, that you
| use regularly can you name?
|
| Here's an interesting list of major bridges with dates,
| most of the newer ones being replacements:
| https://www.carolinadesigns.com/obx-guide/fun-
| info/bridges/
|
| They even note a rare exception designed to last 100
| years with maintenance.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Mackinac Bridge is somewhat famous, built in the 1950s.
|
| They more or less do continuous maintenance during the
| warmer months of the year.
|
| (So older than 50, but younger than 100)
| bluedino wrote:
| Michiganders will also know the "Z Bridge", completed in
| 1988
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilwaukee_Bridge
|
| Sticking with the mid-western therme, the Chicago Skyway
| was built in 1958
| colomon wrote:
| First span of the Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron to
| Sarnia) built 1938, doing just fine as far as I know.
| (Drove over it a couple of weekends ago.) Second span was
| 1997.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The Crimean bridge is quite (in)famous, and it was built
| quite recently.
|
| The Millau Viaduct also comes to mind when thinking of
| famous, iconic modern bridges.
| kergonath wrote:
| The Oresund Bridge as well (opened in 2000).
| philwelch wrote:
| Most of the bridges I can think of in the state of
| Washington are much newer than that.
|
| There are now two Tacoma Narrows Bridges. The oldest was
| built in 1950. The one that infamously collapsed was
| built in 1940. The newer bridge is from 2007. The West
| Seattle Bridge was closed due to damage in 2020 and
| reopened after repairs in 2022. It was originally built
| in the 1980's after the previous bridge was hit by a
| ship. There are two floating bridges on I-90 east of
| Seattle. One of them sunk during reconstruction work in
| 1990 and was replaced. Theres also a new 520 floating
| bridge that opened in 2016. The Hood Canal Bridge (also a
| floating bridge) originally opened in 1961, sunk in 1979,
| was reopened in the 1980's, and large parts of it were
| replaced in the 00's.
|
| The Ballard Bridge actually is over a century old! It was
| opened in 1917. However there was a lot of reconstruction
| done during the 1930's. The Fremont Bridge is also from
| 1917. Both of these bridges span a ship canal that was
| built between 1911 and 1934. The Aurora Bridge was also
| built in the 1930's.
| tekla wrote:
| I can't imagine how it is to be so insulated from the
| world to not be able to name a single major bridge
| construction in the past 50 years.
| vundercind wrote:
| If you don't live somewhere with famous/major bridges
| it's really easy. I doubt I could name ten bridges
| _period_ that aren't in my mid-sized city (and I can only
| give the correct name for two of the ones here, neither
| of which is famous). I can only identify maybe four by
| sight from outside my city--I can name a few that I
| couldn't pick out of a lineup of photos.
| serf wrote:
| vincent thomas bridge in LA is from 1960 -- old but not
| 100+
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| There's a massive one being constructed right now - the
| Gordie Howe International Bridge. It'll be the second
| bridge (and fourth crossing) between Detroit and Windsor
| when it opens next year. Although maybe I only know of
| that one because I grew up in metro Detroit.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Depends on the "we" you're talking about, I guess.
|
| In the DC/MD/VA area, almost all the bridges I can name
| are less than 100 years old. Woodrow Wilson, American
| Legion, Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Chesapeake Bay Bridge-
| Tunnel, Key Bridge, Key Bridge, Nice Bridge, Memorial
| Bridge, Chain Bridge, 14th street bridges... Some of
| those were even built after 2000! Also the New River
| Gorge Bridge in WV is pretty famous and not even 50.
|
| Well, actually, the Key Bridge (in DC) apparently turned
| 100 years old last year. And I guess the Long Bridge
| (though not a road bridge) is also over 100...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Living not too far outside Minneapolis, we rebuilt a
| bridge that rather famously came down a bit over 15 years
| ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bri
| dge
| Hamuko wrote:
| Doesn't the US have a problem with bridges exceeding
| their expected service lives?
| Retric wrote:
| The boom of bridges after automobiles became common are
| all running out of time. Yet, paying for a replacement
| early is also wasteful.
|
| So it's an issue, but those bridges where also
| constructed by a far poorer nation so it's not that big a
| deal.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > but those bridges where also constructed by a far
| poorer nation
|
| That's a must more interesting question when discussing
| the topic of infrastructure.
|
| Sure we've created a lot more money in the last 50 years,
| but we've also lost a lot of domestic manufacturing. When
| it comes to something as vital as roads and bridges are
| we poorer when we have less paper money or when we are
| less independent in the manufacturing and maintenance of
| them?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Money is just a proxy for power, so "poorer" means not
| able to do something. Note that you are referring to "we"
| being poorer, and a country's ability to do (or get)
| something is not the same as an individual within the
| country's ability to do something.
| Retric wrote:
| Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more
| productive than we where 50 years ago and the US
| population is 50% larger. That means the government has a
| lot more resources to work with though how it spends them
| is another question.
|
| I think people feel poorer because income inequality
| increased so much. New homes are huge because new home
| buyers are the upper end of the wealth curve. Same deal
| with cars etc. Stuff that targets everyone like normal
| sized TV's ends up being extremely cheap because revealed
| preferences show people buy cheap when it's an option.
| serf wrote:
| >That means the government has a lot more resources to
| work with though how it spends them is another question.
|
| it's not that clear-cut. regulations regarding
| construction are many times more strict, as well
| employment restrictions and safety code.
|
| I mean, the things like the transcontinental railroad
| were built with what would largely be considered
| inhumanely treated human slaves by today standards --
| that kind of 'advantageous hiring condition' thankfully
| no longer exists.
|
| Stuff like that plus millions of other regulatory nuances
| that drive the cost of development to be many times more
| expensive than during the bad old 'wild west' make these
| kind of value analysis gapped by many years near
| impossible.
| Retric wrote:
| The transcontinental railroad was built without modern
| heavy equipment. Today fewer people can get a lot more
| work done even with humane working conditions and modern
| safety code. Which helps explain humane working
| conditions and modern safety code.
|
| As to regulations, in 2023 an I-95 bridge failed after a
| gasoline tanker truck fire. They took 12 days to get a
| temporary replacement that got traffic flowing again. You
| occasionally see such projects where we need a fix _now_
| and then it happens. However, it was a _temporary_
| replacement and they needed an actual long term solution.
|
| The difference between such rapid projects and more
| typical ones include time consuming steps to preventing
| dirt from settling and causing problems in the future
| etc. Regulations are filled with such tradeoffs, but that
| doesn't mean we're unable to move more quickly just that
| we can afford to do something else.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more
| productive than we where 50 years ago and the US
| population is 50% larger
|
| Production per capita may have gone up, but that's (a)
| likely measuring productivity in financial terms and (b)
| heavily correlated with an increase in natural resource
| consumption, especially fossil fuels.
|
| If we want to consider ourselves richer because we are
| able and willing to use more natural resources today
| could lead down a dark (and very hot) road.
| Retric wrote:
| Fossil fuel consumption in the US is down way down
| especially on a per person basis because of improved
| efficiency and cheaper alternatives. There's more
| Americans today, but in many ways we are consuming fewer
| resources while still being better off.
|
| Compare a modern jet with one from the 1974 and sure many
| passengers have less leg room but it's hauling both
| people and 3rd party cargo while still using far less
| than 1/2 the fuel per passenger mile. Such improvements
| really add up and include things like engineered lumber
| using fast growth pines.
|
| Look at the most popular car 50 years ago and you'll see
| the Ford Pinto. It's slow, unsafe, tiny, time consuming
| to maintain, fuel inefficient, and missing modern
| amenities but it was affordable. Inflation adjusted it's
| roughly the cost of a Mitsubishi Mirage which while
| better in just about every way is a rough equivalent the
| reason people are buying crossovers rather than the
| Mirage today is because people just have more wealth in
| real terms.
| _heimdall wrote:
| When you say it is "down way down", how much is that
| exactly?
|
| The data I found only goes back to 1965 [1], but from the
| absolute peak in the 70s to today we've reduced per
| capita use by around 30%. Over the last 20 years we've
| reduced it by around 15%, going back 10 years and the
| reduction is only around 5%. Time scale matters a lot
| here, as does a definition of what "way downdowm" would
| mean in real % reductions.
|
| I totally agree we've made use of oil more efficient in
| things like engine efficiency. We've also found more uses
| for oil byproducts, which can be good or bad depending on
| your opinion (and again, on your time scale). If we've
| improved fuel efficiency by 50% and at best reduced
| fossil fuel per capita by 30%, we've squandered some of
| those gains by using more oil for other things.
|
| Whether that's a good or bad thing is really up to
| opinion, goals one has in mind, and how one weighs the
| trade offs.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-per-
| capita
| Retric wrote:
| At this scale even 10% is a big drop, down by 1/3 is IMO
| down way down.
|
| That chart gives 31% in 49 years 63,836 in 2022 vs 92,635
| in 1973, but the numbers are dropping faster each year.
| _heimdall wrote:
| That's a common topic here, yes, though honestly I rarely
| hear about a bridge collapse. I don't actually remember
| the last time I saw news of a bridge or overpass collapse
| that wasn't causes by damage like this.
|
| Makes me want to find the data now. I don't actually
| known if our bridges are too old, poorly maintained and
| falling apart early, or if the whole topic is just herd
| mentality and politics.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I don 't actually remember the last time I saw news of
| a bridge or overpass collapse that wasn't causes by
| damage like this._
|
| Fern Hollow Bridge Mk. II?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If we count pedestrian overpasses as part of overpass;
| FIU pedestrian overpass.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Among the more spectacular recent US bridge failures was
| the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, which failed during rush
| hour with bumper-to-bumper traffic with a loss of 13
| lives on 1 August 2007: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-
| 35W_Mississippi_River_bridge>
|
| There's a list of many more failures at Wikpedia, though
| international in scope:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures>
|
| There are a number of ship-bridge collisions listed, as
| well as fuel-tanker explosions, which seems to be a
| surprisingly common failure mode.
|
| Also numerous failures in China, though how much of that
| is simply a scale effect I can't say.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Bridges only last for roughly 50 years.
|
| The bridge projects I've been on spec 75 or 100 years.
| Main difference is better protection/sacrificial depth on
| ferrous members.
| LeonB wrote:
| I remember one of my engineering lecturers giving a good
| rule of thumb as "your retirement date, plus 10 years"
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Bridges only last for roughly 50 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge
|
| Opened in 1781, still in service and perfectly safe. Of
| course, there are no container ships nearby. But I reckon
| you could sail a container ship under it, given enough
| water; and to damage the bridge supports, the container
| ship would need climbing equipment.
|
| 1781 isn't many years after the Declaration of
| Independence.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Notice it's a pedestrian and not a vehicle bridge as
| well.
| notahacker wrote:
| If there was enough water for the 48m beam, 24m airdraft
| container ship that just collapsed the Baltimore bridge
| to attempt to navigate under the 30m span, 16m high Iron
| Bridge I don't think the bridge would stand a chance...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Heh! OK, so I'm wrong about being able to sail a
| container ship under the Iron Bridge.
|
| It didn't take motor traffic, because when it was built,
| there was no motor traffic. But the claim I replied to
| was about _all_ bridges. But it used to take vehicle
| traffic: the WP article says "In 1934 it was designated
| a scheduled monument and closed to vehicular traffic."
| Retric wrote:
| And all bridges _do_ last roughly 50 years. Look at all
| bridges and figure out the average, median, or mode
| lifespan is reasonably close to 50 years + /- depends on
| where you draw the lines.
|
| A tiny fraction reach 500 and so far none that we know of
| have hit 5,000 though there's a few possibilities.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is really bad math, your calculation is not about
| bridge strength / longevity but about how many bridges we
| built recently.
|
| For example, if tomorrow we decided to build a new bridge
| next to every old bridge, average lifespan would half.
| Retric wrote:
| current age != lifespan
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
|
| > if tomorrow we decided to build a new bridge next to
| every old bridge, average lifespan would half.
|
| The only way building a bunch of new bridges changes
| lifespan is if we changed how they where built.
|
| Figuring out lifespan rather than age is at best an
| approximation after looking at the bridges that didn't
| survive and the condition of bridges that do, but the
| uncertainty is low.
| Retric wrote:
| I'll raise you:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkadiko_Bridge
|
| But that's talking about the tail end of the bell curve
| not it's center.
| vikingerik wrote:
| That's also a much smaller scale. 22 ft long, 13 ft high,
| and carries only foot traffic or maybe horses. Much less
| is demanded of that structure than of a river-spanning
| mile-long truck-carrying bridge.
| mannykannot wrote:
| An obsolete or worn-out bridge is likely to be replaced
| by another, and in such cases, a risk analysis which
| potentially comes to different conclusions depending on
| how often such a replacement occurs is missing the point.
| ithkuil wrote:
| "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an
| engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."
|
| And in practice only bridges that "barely" stand are
| economically viable
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > only bridges that "barely" stand are economically viable
|
| That really depends on what is counted as part of the
| economy and who is doing the valuing.
| bbor wrote:
| I'm a huge "it's capitalism's fault" person, but this one
| feels mostly inevitable. Bridges are wonders of
| engineering that require this delicate balance, and I
| don't think "just build em the old way" is an option.
| It's not just price, it's strength (for non-container-
| ship events...), span, height, construction time, etc.
| Obviously I'm in no place to evaluate the specifics of
| this bridge, and as someone from the SF Bay Area I know
| allll about corporate corruption fucking up expensive
| brand new bridges, but I feel like you're yelling at the
| moon a bit here. Apologies if I misunderstood though!
| ithkuil wrote:
| well, "economically viable" doesn't necessarily mean
| scraping the bottom.
|
| For example the great pyramids of giza are very solidly
| built. You certainly don't expect that level of build for
| every commercial or residential building out there.
|
| Now, on the other end of the spectrum you can have
| buildings that can collapse on minor earthquakes.
|
| There is a balance somewhere in the middle.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Yes, and it looks like it did take out an entire section. So
| it isn't like the ship just 'nicked' it and bent a few
| members. An entire support was taken out.
| jalk wrote:
| Which is why many bridges have stuctures around the pillars
| to avoid the direct collisions
| loeg wrote:
| Check out Brick Immortar (it's a pun) on YouTube for some in
| depth videos on past container ship collisions with bridges and
| how newer bridges are engineered.
| rpeden wrote:
| Here's the one about the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse in
| Tampa Bay: https://youtu.be/3htwtaJI2nM?si=7SKMY2qxQEQpaf-O
|
| It's pretty similar to this one.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| People love bridges which look sleek, thin and like air. They
| are also cheaper (less materials). But this means there is no
| redundancy left.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| The Mathews Bridge in Jacksonville was clipped by a container
| ship a few years back and did not collapse. Despite being
| almost 75 years old, they fixed it up and it opened back up
| after a year or two. The difference is that the boat did not
| hit a pylon.
| plastic3169 wrote:
| There is this often in HN featured article about bridge
| engineer analysing bridge collapses in film [1]. It's about
| suspension bridges though but the takeaway for me was that when
| they go they go completely.
|
| [1] https://hackaday.com/2015/11/18/suspension-bridges-of-
| disbel...
| dathinab wrote:
| At least in the links with the video now you can see that the
| container ship directly hits one of the two main (and in the
| central area only) pillars completely collapsing it.
|
| No matter(1) the engineering there is no pretty much way to not
| lose the whole large middle area and left area leading to the
| destroyed pillar in that situation.
|
| Such a collapse crates so much force (tension vibrations etc.)
| so that the collapse of the section right of the right pillar
| is not unreasonable.
|
| The only question is if the impact should have made the pillar
| collapse.
|
| But a loaded container ship is ... absurdly massive I mean they
| are like multiple high raise building (but not sky scrapers)
| standing squished together side by side. So the force it can
| apply is huge and if cargo moving in it there will be force
| applied to whatever it crashes into even after the initial
| impact.
|
| And looking at the waves caused by impact with the base it was
| at least 8m high I think (depending on the container ship). So
| that wasn't a "slow moving" impact. And even slow moving
| impacts with container ships can tear apart a solid jetty.
|
| So while the US has issues with infrastructure maintenance idk.
| if anything but building a many pillar bridge would have made
| any difference. And building a many pillar bridge might not be
| very viable depending on the under water landscape and water
| use under the main area.
|
| EDIT: Looking at pictures with daylight where you can try to
| estimate the high of the ship using containers I would say the
| waves where handwavingly 4 containers high so ~9.5m and it also
| looks like the ship might have embedded half of the pillars
| fundament into/under itself (but it's a bit hard to tell to the
| angle of the picture). I think if that's the case probably the
| huge majority of bridge pillars of past and presence would have
| collapsed.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It certainly does not seem reasonable to design a bridge
| pillar to withstand a direct impact from a massive cargo
| ship.
|
| But I guess I thought that maybe there was... typically some
| kind of earthen buffer around the pillar to prevent such an
| impact?
|
| That's probably impractical too, I guess.
|
| I guess I just didn't realize ~$1bn bridges were one fluky
| ship accident away from total collapse at any given time. I
| think maybe I prefer my previous state of ignorance, to be
| quite honest....
| hgomersall wrote:
| An earth buffer is just a bigger pier.
| kamaal wrote:
| >>But I guess I thought that maybe there was... typically
| some kind of earthen buffer around the pillar to prevent
| such an impact?
|
| It does look reasonable to have such a buffer. But any
| preventive measure will have limits as what and how serious
| an impact it can deal with.
|
| In this case the ship this massive is something that is
| carrying ridiculous inertia, and its highly unlikely even a
| buffer could stop such an impact.
|
| I think at some point you are better off solving these
| issues with more regulation(smaller ships)? Instead of
| treating this as a engineering problem.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It wouldn't take as much of a buffer to redirect the ship
| at an angle away from the pillar, would it?
| kergonath wrote:
| I think this would be even harder. Whilst the ship has a
| lot of kinetic energy that needs to get dissipated, it
| also has a huge momentum that needs to be partly overcome
| to redirect it. You'd also need a material with enough
| structural strength to turn the ship. Materials that can
| crumple or deform (like huge concrete blocks or
| earthworks) are great at dissipating energy, but they
| aren't great at deflecting things.
| mannykannot wrote:
| > But any preventive measure will have limits as what and
| how serious an impact it can deal with.
|
| The recent grounding of a large container ship in
| Baltimore's harbor channel demonstrates that a
| sufficiently massive berm will stop any ship. What's
| needed is the will to do something about low-probability
| but catastrophic events (though large-ship collisions,
| groundings and fortuitously harmless steering failures
| are frequent enough that this should not have been
| dismissed as a low-probability event.)
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/business/evergreen-
| container-...
|
| In this case, the nearby towers supporting transmission
| lines across the channel seem to be better-protected
| against ship collisions than the piers of the bridge.
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/J6vTeDW5xjysbdjr9
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The "berm" in this case happens to be the seabed of the
| earth. There's nothing bigger.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Of course - but it doesn't take _all_ of it...
| bmelton wrote:
| Starting from xoa's calculations above, assuming you can
| pack a berm with well-compacted soil enough that it can
| absorb 1,000 joules per cubic meter, you'd need a buffer
| of something like 10 meters surrounding each piling with
| 3 meters of depth to keep it safe from this kind of
| impact. That's 10 meters in every direction from the
| center of the support -- let's assume the support has a
| thickness of 0 meters for the sake of the math, and
| acknowledging that the gaps between structural supports
| on the bridge is approximately 30 meters -- the only way
| to protect it with earth is to make the bridge impassable
| by water. Of course, this would protect it from ship
| strikes.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You needn't stop the ship completely with the berm: just
| taking up enough energy that the bridge lives for 20
| minutes after the impact would be useful.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Even if it takes 10 meters to get the job done (in
| practice, ships will not be coming at the piers
| perpendicularly to the channel), that is far from
| rendering the channel impassable.
|
| Secondly, I believe riprap would be preferred to
| compacted soil (though compacted soil did a pretty good
| job stopping the Ever Given three years ago.)
|
| Thirdly (and rendering the above moot), what's been done
| around the replacement Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa
| bay (mentioned in other posts here) shows that protection
| is, in fact, practical.
|
| In view of these considerations, I'm not even going to
| check if, for example, xoa considered the energy absorbed
| by the ship (Update: in fairness, I did take a look at
| what xoa wrote, and I see that it is _you_ who has
| introduced the figure of 1000 J /M^3.)
|
| For an introduction to a serious engineering approach to
| this problem, look here:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/stco.200
| 910...
| bmelton wrote:
| There are other issues with my work, namely that the
| central span is over 300m in width, not 30, as I had
| wrongly discovered, ergo the channel is passable even
| with my extremely half-baked solution.
|
| That said, the dolphin-bulwarks around the Tampa Skyway
| are interesting. I've sailed through similar and not
| known their purpose other than to observe that local
| waterfowl like to line up at them ahead of tidal shifts
| to catch the fish as they're encouraged by the currents
| through them.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I have to say, you guys are all calculating things
| without any sort of deference to the nature of the soil
| underneath any of these piers or abutments. Also, you're
| both off on your other points as well. Sunshine Skyway
| has in no way been tested, and there are ways to
| "reinforce" earthen works so that they can handle more
| force so that you don't necessarily need 10 m.
|
| You guys are doing amateur engineering. Firstly we don't
| even know what happened here yet. Secondly we don't know
| the nature of the problem we'd have to solve in
| protecting any span that would have been at that
| position. (How deep is the water? How far down to
| bedrock? Geological nature of the soil? etc etc etc)
|
| It seems almost impossible for us as humans to just give
| the professionals some time and space to work so we can
| see what happened. I get that. I even engage in it at
| times. But you guys are stating things with certainty and
| almost indignation? Come on fellas.
|
| Just say your peace and admit it's just a wild ass guess
| that's likely to be wrong in the end like the rest of our
| comments.
|
| ETA: Thank you bmelton for owning that.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I'm not calculating anything; instead, I pointed to an
| article by someone who is involved in the real
| engineering of protecting bridges from ships.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> acknowledging that the gaps between structural
| supports on the bridge is approximately 30 meters_
|
| Measuring a satellite image in Google Maps [1] tells me
| the bridge's central span is more than 300 meters.
|
| [1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/SzAzuzQRUwW7s2gN8
| bmelton wrote:
| Yes, and that's an important correction.
|
| I Googled the distances before the post but apparently
| got the wrong value. Danke!
| flavius29663 wrote:
| You should look at the deisgn of old stone bridges. Their
| side facing up ( so towards the floods and ice) is like a
| wedge pointed upwards. So it's not like he bridge needs a
| buffer to fully stop all the forward energy. It can lift
| the object out of the water and maroon it there.
|
| e.g. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/uploads/imported_images
| /uploads...
| Reason077 wrote:
| When Florida's Sunshine Skyway bridge was partly collapsed
| by a similar incident in 1980, the replacement bridge was
| built with a series of "structural dolphins" and concrete
| barriers to protect against ship strikes. You can see them
| in the image linked below:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge#/media
| /...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the replacement bridge was built with a series of
| "structural dolphins" and concrete barriers to protect
| against ship strikes.
|
| Given how the Skyway collapse is burned into the local
| consciousness, I suspect some of the benefit comes from
| their visibility.
|
| I truly don't know how the dolphins would fair against a
| massive ship strike but I can imagine them doing their
| job.
|
| (ship passing):
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPgQhy2X0AE8yw1.jpg
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| I would also add those barriers seem to depend on the
| ship staying intact during collision. Given the immense
| inertia involved on the bigger ships I could just as
| easily see a scenario where the barrier ends up ripping
| through the lower hull while the rest of the ship
| continues forward.
| krisoft wrote:
| > easily see a scenario where the barrier ends up ripping
| through the lower hull while the rest of the ship
| continues forward
|
| I don't think that is likely? My intuition is that in
| order to stay seaworthy ships are constructed with more
| integrity than that.
|
| I don't have any hard evidence though, just that I have
| looked at many ship collision/allision aftermath photos
| and what you describe is not a failure mode I have seen
| so far.
| semireg wrote:
| See also: Titanic vs Ice
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| > So that wasn't a "slow moving" impact
|
| Exactly. It is only the scale and the viewing angle that
| makes it seem slow moving.
| xoa wrote:
| Just to put some numbers on this:
|
| The MV Dali (IMO#9697428) is a little over 95000 GT, or
| ballpark-ish probably around 114000 tons loaded (and it seems
| to have been loaded, which would make sense on departure). If
| it was going even 5kn (2.6 m/s) that'd be about 300 million
| newton-seconds, or about 3.3 times the momentum of a large
| jumbo jet like a 747 shortly at cruising speed (around 560
| mph). It'd still have the same momentum as said jet if it was
| going just 1.5kn. The ship of course is enormously more
| stoutly built and the force is going to be transmitted far
| more directly into whatever it hits vs into explosions
| driving mass elsewhere.
|
| I've read that both on water and in space for that matter
| enormously massive objects moving very slowly messes with
| human perception and "common sense", it "feels like"
| something moving along smoothly and slowly should be
| stoppable or come to a stop. Enormous momentum and forces can
| be terrifying things.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > enormously massive objects moving very slowly messes with
| human perception and "common sense"
|
| Yes, hence warnings to amateur boat users (e.g. on a canal
| boat) not to try to stop a collision with the bank using
| your arms or legs.
|
| [Edit] Boats can also do things that are unintuitive if you
| are used to driving a car. E.g. turning round the centre of
| gravity when you steer rather than following the front
| wheels.
| smogcutter wrote:
| In the black powder era of warfare, soldiers were given
| similar warnings about "slowly" rolling cannonballs.
|
| People would think they could stop them like soccer
| balls, and lose a foot.
| bmelton wrote:
| There are similar warnings for sailing vessels, but
| because the standing rigging of the ship is usually kept
| in high enough tension that putting your hands on a pilon
| to stop a collision might leave your hands vulnerable to
| being cut off by a mainsail's shrouds.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Ouch! That reminded me of seeing someone get a rope burn
| from a line on a yacht. I always wear gloves when
| handling lines on a boat nowadays.
| litenboll wrote:
| I had a summer job once, filling trains with sugar. They
| weighed about 15kkg per wagon (usually 5-10 wagons per
| train IIRC).
|
| One time the pulling cart broke down and we had to switch
| it for another, but when we took it off the rails we forgot
| about the "shoe" that is supposed to go between the rail
| and one of the wheels so it can't move downhill (it was
| like 1degree of slope so barely recognizable as a slope).
|
| It started moving extremely slowly, and all of us except
| one tried to hold back the force of the train, which of
| course was imossible and dangerous. The one who did not try
| to push it very quickly found the "shoe" and put in place.
| Initially it did not seem to help at all, the train just
| continued moving at the same pace, tearing up asphalt with
| the shoe. It finally came to a stop after about 3-5m(?)
| which takes a fair bit of time with such low speed, and
| felt like forever given the situation.
|
| The train tracks headed out into an open road, so it could
| have been so much worse if it were not for the only person
| thinking clearly in the situation (he was one of the more
| experienced in our group).
| master_crab wrote:
| Also want to highlight this for another reason. At slow
| speeds rail and boats suffer from far less "moving"
| friction than road vehicles. So once off there is very
| little slowing them down vs cars and trucks that suffer
| from high rolling friction.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| Grady Hillhouse of Practical Engineering recently did a
| great demo of this. He was able to pull his car in
| neutral and an empty train car on rails with roughly the
| same force.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGhBHrr5CYQ
| kamaal wrote:
| One wonders how braking works on a train.
| master_crab wrote:
| Mostly the same as it would work on a car with a brake
| shoe applied to the steel wheel.
|
| The only major difference is that they often use a safety
| air brake system shared across an entire consist (train)
| that requires "charged" pressure (above atmosphere) to
| disengage the brake (although I think they have moved to
| an electronic system that now monitors air pressure in
| each car individually).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Semi trucks have air brakes that function very similarly.
| One air source for all brakes, pressure releases, brakes
| lock on failure.
| phyzome wrote:
| I think it's actually in an earlier video, and he wasn't
| able to actually pull the train car due to track
| irregularity -- but according to calculations he should
| have been able to if there was a safe way to give it a
| bit of a nudge.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| You're absolutely right; I posted the wrong link.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfA0ftgWI7U
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > all of us except one tried to hold back the force of
| the train
|
| This reminds me of a vivid memory I have. I'd just
| finished a shift cooking, and out back of our restaurant
| there were railroad tracks. I had a beer and smoke out
| there with my shift mate, and a train was rolling by. I
| thought it would be fun to practice jumping on the train.
| So I do a few passes jogging alongside it, hopping on and
| off. Then my buddy, standing still, reached out and grabs
| a rung of a ladder on one of the cars. It immediately
| picked him up, but he gripped harder due to being
| startled. He got ragdolled through the air about 10 feet
| from where he was initially standing.
|
| Kids, don't play with trains (trespassing issues aside).
| mannykannot wrote:
| > If it was going even 5kn...
|
| I don't know what sort of speed ships travel in harbors
| (though I know that they are faster than they appear.) In
| this case, it was an ebb tide (though within an hour of the
| low) which might have added something to the ship's speed.
|
| https://tides.willyweather.com/md/baltimore-city/patapsco-
| ri...
| G0dchi1d wrote:
| Thank you, I've been trying to get a ballpark on the
| weight, appreciated.
| acdha wrote:
| According to https://gcaptain.com/ship-lost-control-before-
| hitting-baltim... they were going 7.6kn so your figures are
| "optimistic" by a factor of two. I really don't know how
| much an engineer could have done to stop 600M N/s - that's
| just an enormous amount of energy.
| apaprocki wrote:
| <checks terminal> "current draft is 12.2m with 116851 t
| DWT" and last reported speed was 6.7kt.
|
| Good estimation! :)
| db0255 wrote:
| I saw radar that showed the ship was going 8.7 knots. And
| 7.6 knots before colliding.
| a_e_k wrote:
| Crazy! Going by the higher 7.6 kn figure mentioned
| elsewhere in this thread, that'd be closer to 450 million N
| s.
|
| For another comparison, Wikipedia gives an estimate of
| "Apollo 11 launched from Earth to orbit" at 495 million N s
| [1]. So this is a momentum that's order-of-magnitude
| comparable to space launches.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton-second
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Your math appears off by an order of magnitude. KE =
| 1/2mv^2. [J]
|
| Ship KE = 0.5 * (114000 short tons) * (7.5 knots)^2 =
| ~7.7e8 J.
|
| 747 KE = 0.5 * (510,000 lbs) * (560 mph)^2 = ~7.25e9 J.
|
| 747 avg weight = (MTOW + OEW) / 2 = ~510,000 lbs
| zeteo wrote:
| You don't need to build the bridge to an absurd strength, but
| it may have been insufficiently marked as a navigational
| hazard. Something like a few well-lit pillars 500 feet
| upstream in the water would have given the ship plenty of
| warning to change course, since a vessel travelling at 5
| knots takes about a minute to go 500 feet. The total bridge
| length is on the order of 10,000 feet, so widening the safe
| area around the pillars to 500 feet would not be a
| significant impediment to navigation.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I've seen close-up video where you can see the ship losing
| electrical power twice for not-insubstantial times as it
| approaches the column. I suspect that was a much larger
| factor in the collision than anything the crew may or may
| not have done. Warning time doesn't mean shit if you can't
| steer.
| nytesky wrote:
| https://twitter.com/ChaudharyParvez/status/17725385394958
| 090...
|
| Posted video of power loss. Also black smoke coming out
| rear -- is that normal? Any clue of what onboard crisis
| they were dealing with?
| kossTKR wrote:
| It seems traffic has stopped in the last moments before
| the hit?
|
| Also looks like it's emergency vehicles in standstill
| that are falling, i can't discern any moving cars at
| collapse?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I heard through the grape vine they were able to halt
| traffic across the bridge at the last minute. Only people
| actually on it when it fell were construction workers who
| were filling potholes at the time.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| The ship's mayday gave them enough time to stop most, but
| not all, traffic, according to the MD Governor.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| seems like they should have turned left and tried to go
| under the middle section there instead of cranking all
| the way around right. I imagine they were under task
| saturation with the power outages though.
| bmitc wrote:
| I mean, yes, everybody is pointing out about the mass of the
| container ship, but that's actually to the point of the above
| question and my question. Because the ship's size and weight
| are obvious. Were ships this size regularly passing by or
| under this bridge such that this scenario was effectively
| bound to happen given a ship failure and/or pilot error?
| That's my question. I'm not familiar with port activities, so
| it seems weird to have basically no secondary protection for
| that bridge with container ships of that size operating so
| close that they can hit it mere minutes after some failure.
|
| Watching this video
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk) shows that the
| ship was incredibly close to the bridge in the first place,
| even prior to the supposed failure. It's a bit bewildering to
| me, with my current knowledge, that this scenario wasn't
| envisioned prior.
| shaboinkin wrote:
| That was my thought. The supports look like toothpicks
| relative to the ships that routinely pass through. I don't
| know enough about the forces involved here, but I'd like to
| think when they rebuild, they will add some sort of
| deflection capabilities around the supports that ships must
| past in between. But again, I don't know what that would
| take to deflect a massive ship like this. In hindsight, the
| bridge looks terribly exposed given the persistent risk of
| ships passing through.
| tyingq wrote:
| I did hear one expert on the news say that a better, low-tech
| defense some bridges have is sacrificial piers in front of the
| actual ones. I don't know if this bridge had none, or if they
| didn't get the job done.
| bluedino wrote:
| The Bay Bridge in SF has been hit by numerous ships (as large
| as tankers)
| sf_rob wrote:
| The 2007 Cosco Busan incident appears to be a glancing blow.
| I can't find any information suggesting an analogous impact
| at any point.
| bluedino wrote:
| > It's surprising that ships capable of doing this damage were
| probably regularly driving past it, and its safety as a
| thoroughfare depended entirely on those collisions not
| happening.
|
| There are cities with skyscrapers near airports, which depend
| on the airplanes not hitting the skyscrapers.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I don't drive boats or around water much but I've seen
| "bumpers" on bridge pylons before that make a collision more of
| a glancing blow and guide the boat to the side. I guess there
| wasn't any installed on this bridge? Also, someone on Imgur
| pointed out that when this bridge was built boats that large
| weren't a risk. That may or may not be true but sounds
| plausible.
| fl7305 wrote:
| > when this bridge was built boats that large weren't a risk
|
| Doesn't sound plausible to me. Very large Panamax ships were
| used in the 1970's when the bridge was built.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Sorry, but you're very wrong. A civil engineer on Sky News
| even raised this issue.
|
| https://www.container-transportation.com/worlds-largest-
| cont...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| There were tiny bumpers, two for each pylon, one on each
| side, but looks like they were place too far out, you can see
| them here...
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1c/6e/f8/1c6ef8db981c77b1bd7809827.
| ..
|
| Ironically there are power lines running in parallel that
| have much more substantial protection, here you can see the
| powerline protection and the tiny bumpers...
|
| https://patabook.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cbsn-
| fu...
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Fenders and such. A major problem is this bridge was designed
| and built in an era where ships were substantially smaller
| (3000 TEU) than they are today (20000 TEU).
| Lance_ET_Compte wrote:
| In 2013, a tanker ship hit the Bay Bridge (Oakland <--> SF) but
| didn't do much damage. In 2007, another tanker (Cosco Busan)
| hit the same bridge dumping oil into the bay:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upfjxfl2nRM. We have a new
| bridge there now because that one was also damaged in the Loma
| Prieta earthquake.
|
| When the Golden Gate needs replacement, the Marin NIMBY's that
| didn't extend BART to the north bay are going to be sad (more
| likely, their children will be).
| ak_111 wrote:
| This brings back to memory 911 conspiracy theories.
|
| Many revolved around the unlikelihood that a building would
| collapse the way the towers collapsed just due to knocking out
| a few floors at the top. But the truth is all these mega
| structures are quite fragile and can instantly collapse in
| unintuitive ways.
| G0dchi1d wrote:
| The ongoing construction work likely creaty some type of
| structural integrity issue...
| patrickwalton wrote:
| In many structures, catastrophic failures are far more likely
| than graceful failures.
| foxhop wrote:
| these ships have to be boarded by special port captians to make
| this maneuver.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| One factor that a lot of people in this discussion are missing
| is that buildings are primarily built to resist vertical
| forces, because gravity is by far the largest force any
| building (or bridge) ever experiences.
|
| Having a large force strike perpendicular to gravity is just
| not something it's designed for at all. All it ever has to
| handle in the form of force from that direction is wind, and
| that's absolutely nothing compared to a fully laden container
| ship hitting it.
| pdntspa wrote:
| That bridge looks like its almost entirely made of just
| trusses. It's hard to imagine how one might expect it not to
| collapse when everything holding it together is so thin.
| doer1984 wrote:
| Ironically, simply bulking up the ground around the piers would
| have had the ship run aground; at 8 knots the ship would have
| slowed to a stop within several yards, and suffered minor
| damage, maybe would have required being tugged back into clear
| waters. Running aground puts the majority of impact into a
| downward force absorbed by the earth. It's hard to build a
| bridge pier that will withstand 200,000 tons of direct impact,
| no matter how slowly that's moving.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| That's what makes sense to me. Ships are designed to minimize
| drag going through the water. But the friction of the entire
| hull scraping across the bottom should be MUCH larger and
| thus able to exert lots more stopping force.
|
| Also, if the ground is sloped, it will act like a ramp,
| lifting the ship out of the water. The loss of buoyancy means
| its weight will push downward on the ground below it. An
| increased normal force means more friction, thus more
| stopping ability.
| doer1984 wrote:
| Simply bulking up the ground around the piers with loose fill
| or monolithic concrete would have had the ship run aground; at
| 9mph (the recorded impact speed) the ship would have slowed to
| a stop within several yards, and suffered minor damage, maybe
| would have required being tugged back into clear waters.
| Running aground puts the majority of impact into a downward
| force absorbed by the earth. It's hard to build a bridge pier
| that will withstand 200,000 tons of direct impact, no matter
| how slowly that's moving.
| hwh47 wrote:
| separate but pertinent question: what was the mv dali's air
| draft? (FSK bridge's clearance is 185'/56m) was the container
| ship going to fit under the bridge, i.e., perhaps the incident
| was an aborted attempt to crossing under the bridge?
| hwh47 wrote:
| separate but pertinent question: what was the mv dali's air
| draft? (FSK bridge's clearance is 185'/56m) ...perhaps the
| incident was an aborted attempt to crossing under the bridge?
| doer1984 wrote:
| Anyone know about backup steering power on these vessels? I
| know they typically keep emergency generators, but does this
| provide adequate steering power?
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Someone hasn't played enough polybridge
| snarf21 wrote:
| Is there a reason we don't force ships above a certain side to
| always approach a bridge like this perpendicular in the main
| channels? Seems like a trivial thing to implement immediately
| and makes this never happen again.
| samstave wrote:
| The first thing that popped into my head when I mis-read the
| title as "Francis Scot Key Board"
|
| https://i.imgur.com/w9foiSB.jpg
| Par_Avion wrote:
| Oh, this makes me feel bad for Baltimore. Only bad news seem to
| come out of this town. Its reputation -- both domestically and
| internationally -- is mostly informed by The Wire, Freddie
| Gray/BLM, a dysfunctional city government, the 2019 ransomeware
| attack, the spoiled batch of J&J Covid vaccine... and now this.
| It's a real shame. It's a good place.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| John Waters on Baltimore:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/nov/28/john-waters-b...
|
| John Waters' Baltimore:
|
| https://baltimore.org/what-to-do/john-waters-baltimore/
| hiddencost wrote:
| Weirdly I think Baltimore is thriving. It just really doesn't
| advertise itself.
|
| Hopkins is huge.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| We've also got cherry blossoms, some good ramen and a few good
| breweries. Shocking lack of excellent Mexican food, however.
| And some world-class hospitals and universities. Don't take TV
| shows so seriously.
| doom2 wrote:
| Not a ton of Mexican food, but if you're open to other
| Central or South American cuisines, there are a ton of places
| in upper Fells Point.
| lancemjoseph wrote:
| Please do yourselves a favor if you haven't already and
| check out the tacos at Taqueria el Sabor del Parque on the
| south side of Patterson Park. Also while you're in the
| area, grab a kilo of tortillas from El Taquito Mexicano in
| Fells.
| Philadelphia wrote:
| BMore Taqueria in Fells Point is pretty good.
|
| https://www.bmoretaqueria.com
| gnatman wrote:
| We're fine, thanks.
| taf2 wrote:
| It took 5 years to build in the 1970s. It took 5 seconds to
| destroy
| yread wrote:
| let's see how long will it take to build today
| nathancahill wrote:
| "We can't, we don't know how to do it"
| kube-system wrote:
| Pittsburgh built the replacement for the collapsed Fern
| Hollow Bridge in less than 8 months. The one that collapsed
| took 14 months to build.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Hollow_Bridge
| taf2 wrote:
| See https://mdta.maryland.gov/Toll_Facilities/FSK.html
| dvh wrote:
| Could this be cyber attack? On the video the ship goes normally
| straight under the bridge, then does sharp turn right and for 20s
| or so goes directly into the pier.
| rpeden wrote:
| Anything's possible, but a ship losing steering control is not
| _that_ uncommon.
|
| This just happened at a particularly bad time and place.
| peteradio wrote:
| It looks like the nominal trajectory takes it very close to
| the pylon. Why wouldn't nominal be towards the middle of the
| two pylons?
| brazzy wrote:
| The ship loses power before the turn. The power loss could of
| course have been the result of a cyber attack, but a mundane
| mechanical failure seems more likely.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| Not that it matters to anyone else, but having driven across that
| bridge dozens of times with my kids, this is just shocking. It's
| one of the main corridors in the area. Thank god it happened in
| the middle of the night, though that'll be no consolation to the
| families of those who may have died.
| hiddencost wrote:
| I don't think that's quite right. People in Dundalk will suffer
| a fair bit, as will folks in Glen Burnie and Annapolis, but
| most people are going from DC to Delaware, and go north rather
| than over the Key bridge.
|
| I think this is most harmful for commuters.
|
| Blocking the Baltimore harbor is brutal although I suspect the
| passage will be cleared as quickly as possible.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I think 30-35k cars a day cross that bridge. Being local to
| the area, is is going to make traffic in the entire metro
| area much worse, and it is already awful.
| desro wrote:
| Report from CBS News mentions the bridge handled "11.5
| million" vehicles a day.
|
| EDIT: That number seemed fishy; I think the reporter is
| referring to the traffic along the entire I-95 corridor.
|
| https://x.com/CBSNews/status/1772556368106450953?s=20
| dgfitz wrote:
| It is between 30-35k/day, about 12.5 million/yr.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| LOL, that figure is clearly off. That's double the
| population of the entire state!
|
| Per another comment it's much closer to correct for the
| annual number of vehicle crossings.
| millzlane wrote:
| Local to the area. This was devastating news to wake up to. I
| don't know what's wrong with me but seeing this and knowing
| there were casualties made me cry.
|
| Edit: Maybe I'm just tired and need more sleep.
| CaptainBanger wrote:
| No shame in feeling human friend
| jrwiegand wrote:
| It is shocking and that does not sound like an inappropriate
| response.
| throwanem wrote:
| Hey, don't be too hard on yourself. I'm feeling it too, all
| the way from Medfield. It's a loss.
| iglio wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with you. It's okay to sit with these
| feelings.
| mcv wrote:
| > I don't know what's wrong with me but seeing this and
| knowing there were casualties made me cry.
|
| I think that's called "having feelings". Nothing wrong with
| it.
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| It's called being human.
|
| I worked next door to the church that was shot up in
| Charleston and felt similarly moved despite not knowing them,
| never having been inside the building, and not having even
| been a Christian at the time.
|
| It is a bit strange at some level - not having any true
| connection beyond proximity but you should probably worry if
| you _don't_ at least feel a little something.
| astura wrote:
| >I don't know what's wrong with me
|
| I would be _much_ more concerned if you didn 't feel
| devastated by this and you didn't want to cry.
|
| What you're describing is a normal human reaction to a
| tragedy.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Nothing wrong with crying. I cry sometimes. Heck, if I spend
| too much time thinking about the 343 firefighters who died on
| 9/11, it will still bring a tear to my eye even after all
| these years. It's just part of the human condition. Cherish
| it.
| jrwiegand wrote:
| That was my exact thought. Thankfully, I woke up to messages
| that my family members were safe and sound. I hope they find
| everyone but at this point it seems unlikely.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I agree. I lived in PG county for years and this is a big deal
|
| The 295 bridge collapse a decade ago was similarly shocking
|
| U.S. infrastructure is beyond crisis level.
| mixedmath wrote:
| I'm not sure if I would expect any bridge to survive being
| struck by an enormous container ship.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Older bridges no, but newer bridges should absolutely. The
| Bay Bridge was struck in 2007 and came away mostly
| unscathed due to earlier efforts to prevent catastrophic
| damage in that scenario;
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosco_Busan_oil_spill
|
| Though the Maryland accident looks like it struck it dead
| on - just a massive amount of energy to absorb.
| boringg wrote:
| Glancing blow of the Cosco Busan was a big deal but it
| wasn't a direct impact. Different order of the magnitude
| of forces that impact. Not comparable.
| Baxxter wrote:
| 'The Bay Bridge' refers to something else in this part of
| the country.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge
| smrq wrote:
| Hacker News:California::Internet:USA
|
| It's assumed that everyone comes from California unless
| proven otherwise.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| In my defense, the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge is older and
| carries more 4x more traffic than the "other" Bay bridge!
| But yeah, given that the Chesapeake one is just down the
| road from the bridge that collapsed, I get the confusion.
| amluto wrote:
| > SF-Oakland Bay Bridge is older
|
| In a Bridge of Theseus sort of way. The entire Eastern
| span is very new, a lot of the approaches have been
| rearranged, and major components of the Western span has
| been replaced over the years. But I guess none of this
| affects the age of the bridge, at least in Wikipedia's
| estimation :)
| Cyphase wrote:
| This is why I come to HN, for Ship of Theseus references.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The container ship "unluckily" maneuvered between the
| protective barriers. About 4 more protective barriers would
| have stopped this collapse.
|
| ------
|
| No bridge survives being struck by a container ship. That's
| why barriers are erected around critical points. There
| already were barriers, they just weren't complete coverage
| for some reason. (EDIT: Maybe the older 1970s era design of
| this particular bridge wouldn't allow more protection to be
| placed. Obviously this situation calls for a full
| investigation / lessons learned kind of thing, as part of
| the new bridge building process)
| myself248 wrote:
| A lot of bridges have their pilings set on mini islands,
| terrifically reinforced piles of stone and concrete that
| extend for quite some distance around the actual support. I
| don't know why some are built without that, it always
| weirds me out seeing the spindly legs going straight into
| the water, and this is why.
|
| Edit to add: Check out Fort Carroll, precisely such an
| artificial island just a few hundred yards away in the very
| same harbor. It was built in the 1840's as a military
| position to defend the harbor, and has fallen into disuse.
| Now just imagine if the bridge sat on a couple of those,
| instead of the foundations it had. Ship would've barely
| dented the wall.
| callalex wrote:
| Civil engineering is very complex and doesn't go off of
| feelings. I'm sure the type of soil and rock that the
| bridge is built on inform such decisions.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| There is this other thing that's very complex- getting
| budget from the local government to fix something
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I would and furthermore I think there is a massive bias at
| play - if the exact same disaster happened in China there
| would be jokes about bridges made of Chinesium.
|
| There is an expectation that a disaster happening in the
| west in a result of unforeseeable act of god, but in China
| it will be a result of corruption or shoddy workmanship.
|
| Whereas in reality maintenance standard in the west have
| fallen but in the east they improved.
|
| So now this bias protects responsible decision makers from
| legal consequences - no one went to prison for grenfell
| disaster, postmaster scandal or the Boeing debacle.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| > Whereas in reality maintenance standard in the west
| have fallen
|
| In the context of this incident, are you saying that we
| _previously_ used to go around retrofitting our 50-year-
| old bridges with more modern defenses, and then at some
| point since then we stopped doing this? Obviously if
| we're talking about new construction, it stands to reason
| that standards have only _increased_, but this was an old
| bridge built to old standards. So which standards have
| "fallen" to result in this disaster specifically?
| cesarb wrote:
| > I'm not sure if I would expect any bridge to survive
| being struck by an enormous container ship.
|
| Not a container ship, but an abandoned bulk carrier ship:
| https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-
| janeiro/noticia/2022/11/14/po...
|
| That bridge survived with little damage, and was reopened
| the following day after small repairs
| (https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-
| janeiro/noticia/2022/11/15/te...).
| dmead wrote:
| Growing up my grandmothers house was on the watet across the
| Bay from Baltimore. This bridge was literally in the backdrop
| of my childhood. Scary stuff.
| kerbs wrote:
| Memories of the Minneapolis bridge collapse.
|
| I lived <1 mile from it at the time it went down, and had
| crossed it earlier in the day on my commute.
| lanthade wrote:
| Yeah. I was out of town hiking in Wyoming at the time and was
| told it was the 35E bridge by a passing hiker who relayed the
| news to me. My mom drove the 35E bridge twice a day. I
| couldn't hike out and call home fast enough. I didn't know
| anyone who was on the bridge when it fell but I do know many
| who missed being on it by minutes. Scary stuff.
| pwenzel wrote:
| I remember standing not far from edge of that shortly after
| it happened (https://www.flickr.com/groups/35w-bridge-
| disaster/), and still get a little panicky when I'm in slow
| traffic on a bridge. This event will affect the city, the
| port, and its people for a long time.
| ajdude wrote:
| I was incredibly worried about my dad, he's a truck driver and
| drove that bridge just an hour prior to this happening.
|
| I'm hearing there were at least 20 cars and a truck on the
| bridge, plus construction workers, at the time; my heart goes
| out to those families
| divbzero wrote:
| Glad to hear your dad made it across safely.
|
| According to current reports, the Maryland Transportation
| Authority Police responded to the ship's "mayday" and stopped
| traffic in the minutes before the catastrophe, but 6
| construction workers are still unaccounted for.
|
| https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/03/26/key-bridge-
| collapses...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| They keep reporting this, and maybe it was because the
| video was sped up, but it looked like there was still
| traffic going across until very close to the collision
| jcranmer wrote:
| The last car crossing that I can see clears the span
| about 1:28:06; the bridge collapses about 1:28:48. That's
| about 40 seconds of gap between the traffic and the
| collapse.
|
| I haven't timed how frequently cars are coming, but it
| seems to be about every 30 seconds or so, which--combined
| with the time it takes to cross the bridge--is evidence
| that a bridge closure was effected _just_ before the
| bridge collapse.
| randerson wrote:
| Whoever was driving that last car had better go buy a
| lottery ticket right away.
| hrunt wrote:
| Why? They already used up all their luck escaping the
| accident.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| If the police were able to close the bridge just in time,
| that's a pretty spectacular response. There were only ~5
| minutes between the ship loosing power initially and the
| impact. The police saved lives, and it's only a shame
| that the construction crew wasn't evacuated in time.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Looking at the MDOT website, the traffic incident closing
| the Key Bridge was posted at 1:27 AM.
|
| The Washington Post has police audio at the time of the
| closure (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-
| va/2024/03/26/baltimore...). A quick summary of the
| timeline from that audio:
|
| * There was a request to close the bridge when the ship
| lost power, which went over police dispatch about a
| minute before the bridge collapse (the bridge collapse is
| reported at timestamp 1:09 in the audio).
|
| * Someone was able to hold the outer loop traffic at
| ~0:20 in the audio, as they reported they were already
| driving along at the time.
|
| * Inner loop traffic is reported stopped at ~0:56 in the
| audio. I suspect there may already have been a police car
| there because of the construction on the bridge.
|
| * Between 0:20 and 0:56, the conversation is about
| pulling the workcrew off the bridge. The police officer
| blocking inner loop traffic, after reporting stopping
| traffic, is indicating that he's waiting for a second
| unit to arrive before going onto the bridge to collect
| them.
|
| * At 1:09, the bridge is reported collapsed, and multiple
| officers confirm. There is a question as to which traffic
| is stopped--the people blocking inner loop traffic are
| unable to confirm outer loop stoppage, but the person
| holding outer loop informs them of the stoppage at the
| end of the recording.
|
| So traffic seems to have been stopped for about 10-50
| seconds before the bridge collapse, depending on the
| exact length of time between someone stopping traffic and
| radioing in that they did so. From what I can tell, it
| sounds like outer loop traffic was stopped in time solely
| by sheer coincidence, while the inner loop traffic may
| have been existing police presence (for the construction
| zone) changing posture to a full closure.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Do you know what inner loop and outer loop traffic means
| here? Are they different sides/directions of the bridge?
|
| And it is tragic how close the police were to evacuating
| the work crews. I interpret that the officer blocking one
| entry intended to go on to the bridge but was waiting for
| another cruiser to block the bridge before he left. A few
| more minutes and the bridge might have collapsed with no
| casualties. Though at least an officer attempting a
| rescue wasn't hurt.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| There is a semi-truck that enters from the right just before
| the crash at https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?t=299 (4m59s). And
| some more vehicles that follow after. Doesn't seem like they
| stopped "all" traffic as is claimed.
| elihu wrote:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Francis+Scott+Key+Bridge,+...
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Looking at the video of the collapse, it looks so unreal and...
| cartoony? Like my brain refuses to comprehend that this happened
| to an actual metal bridge, like one with cars and trucks on it.
|
| small blessing it happened late at night, so hopefully the
| casualty numbers are low...
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This port has a very large volume of car shipping. The ro-ro
| shipping costs are expected to go much higher as a result of this
| accident.
|
| If you were in the market for a car in the US east coast , act
| now before prices go up!
| ericyd wrote:
| A bunch of people die and this is your response?
| h2odragon wrote:
| It sucks they died; but _our_ life goes on.
|
| For almost all of us, there's _nothing we can do_ to help
| anyone immediately effected by this incident. Would you have
| everyone else stand idle in mourning and respect? For how
| long?
| hermannj314 wrote:
| There is no reason to expect someone to have a rational
| approach to transportation-related fatality in any direction.
|
| Drunk drivers will kill approximately 40 people today in
| America. Most people won't care about that or demand a
| congressional response or blame politicians, etc., so it is
| no more heartless to not care about a few dead people on a
| bridge either.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Also important to note.
|
| The logistic company running this ship was Maersk. That is the
| same shipping company that had the ever given stuck in the suez
| canal a few years ago.
|
| Is Maersk now officially the "Boeing" of shipping?
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| They are in terms of "most large planes are Boeing so you'll
| hear about their accidents most often", no idea if also in
| terms of "terrible safety culture so there'll be an
| unacceptable rate of accidents".
| resolutebat wrote:
| What? No it wasn't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Dali_(2015)
| Symbiote wrote:
| Maersk chartered the ship, according to the Guardian.
| pedermoeller wrote:
| No, Ever Given was not a Maersk ship
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever_Given
| PeterWeitz wrote:
| Didn't they (the waterway authorities in the U.S.) used to
| require tugs to navigate ships under bridges?
| PeterWeitz wrote:
| Didn't waterway authorities (in the U.S.) used to require tugs to
| navigate large ships under bridges?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I thought that they had a pilot board and navigate into port,
| but I only know of anecdotes.
|
| We'll be hearing a _lot_ more about this. It 's a really major
| accident.
|
| I used to live in Bawldamer, in the early 1980s. Back then, it
| was a tough, blue-collar city, but not yet _The Wire_.
| mcv wrote:
| Especially if this ship had power issues, as seems to be the
| case.
| nojvek wrote:
| Tugs to navigate would have prevented this incident.
|
| This container ship ran out of power twice and lost
| navigational control, which resulted in loss of life and
| billions in civilian infrastructure.
|
| Seems one cannot rely on container ships alone to navigate
| narrow passages safely.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Interesting use of the passive voice. Wasn't it clear from the
| start that it was hit by a ship?
| schoen wrote:
| "Has collapsed" isn't passive voice; it's a compound past
| tense.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| Compound past perfect, specifically
| hgomersall wrote:
| I was wondering after watching the video whether there could be
| an emergency bridge closure protocol if a ship veers off its
| intended course. It naively looks to me like there would be
| sufficient time to log the course deviation and stop vehicles
| from entering the bridge with lights and sirens and stuff.
| mhb wrote:
| How could the cost of this possibly be justified?
| hgomersall wrote:
| Why would it be expensive? Traffic lights and sirens are
| cheap. The Tasman bridge apparently stops traffic for all
| large ships https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_Bridge
| interloxia wrote:
| Also had a disaster. "The Tasman Bridge gained national
| attention following the Tasman Bridge disaster. On 5
| January 1975, the bridge was struck by the bulk ore carrier
| SS Lake Illawarra"
| mhb wrote:
| And will you also be revealing the cost of stopping traffic
| versus the expected loss of what it prevents?
| squigz wrote:
| How many people would need to die for it to be justified in
| your eyes? Or maybe just focus on the potential loss of cargo
| from trucks on the bridge, if that helps you.
| mhb wrote:
| How many? It depends on the opportunity cost of installing
| and maintaining whatever half baked thing (lights, sirens,
| computer vision, AI, barriers) it is OP is envisioning on
| how many thousands of bridges versus the frequency of
| issues it will prevent. This calculation is done all the
| time but not so much by the "if it saves only one x" crowd
| of clever solution proposers.
| jgys wrote:
| > whatever half baked thing (lights, sirens, computer
| vision, AI, barriers) it is OP is envisioning
|
| Do you think OP should have produced a formal proposal
| with input from industry experts and detailed cost and
| risk mitigation figures before submitting a comment on an
| internet forum?
| mhb wrote:
| Either that or another ten seconds of rumination.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It depends on the opportunity cost of installing and
| maintaining whatever half baked thing (lights, sirens,
| computer vision, AI, barriers)
|
| I love how we jump to AI when all we need is 4 cameras
| and a dude with a pair of eyes...
|
| Wait until you learn how train barriers worked not so
| long ago
| Symbiote wrote:
| Large bridges like this in Europe already have lights and
| sometimes barriers to allow them to be closed if there
| are very high winds, or a vehicle collision.
|
| Adding a system that turns the lights red doesn't seem so
| expensive, it existed in Denmark in 2001 when a ship
| almost hit the Great Belt Bridge:
|
| Road signs and barriers, normally used to slow traffic in
| bad weather [1]
|
| (Autotranslation of [2])
|
| > The VTS system (Vessel Traffic Service) must monitor
| and guide the ships, so that ships approaching the West
| Bridge and parts of the East Bridge can be avoided. In
| the event of danger of hitting the bridges, the
| navigators must trigger an alarm in accordance with
| detailed rules. The most critical are two bridge sections
| on the East Bridge over the connection spans to the
| anchor blocks (each 1-2 kilometres). If a ship is heading
| in there - where there are no artificial islands - the
| alarm must be given four minutes before approaching - so
| that the bridge section can be cleared. On the West
| Bridge, the warning time is not so critical, as you can
| see in good time if a ship is on the wrong track. The
| system operates using three radars, two infrared video
| cameras and two photosensitive ditto plus a standard VHF
| antenna system (see graphic). The station is continuously
| in contact with all ships over 50 gross tonnes and with a
| mast height of over 15 metres. The ship's call number,
| name, cargo, destination, draft, mast height, etc. are
| registered on arrival at the reporting lines, and when
| the ship and station are contacted on VHF channel 11, the
| ship is automatically marked (tracked) and provided with
| the call number, course and speed. At the same time, the
| computer goes in and calculates course and speed for the
| next 10 minutes, which can be seen as a yellow line in
| front of the radar signal, which is shaped like a tuft of
| wool. If a ship does not want to report, goes astray or
| refuses to follow the VTS navigator's instructions, the
| VTS station disposes of one of the fleet's rejection
| vessels, which has the authority to give orders to the
| foreign masters.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.3498198,11.1018692,3a
| ,75y,26...
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20090116051425/http://ing
| .dk/art...
| squigz wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how much is a human life worth in these
| calculations?
| billpcs wrote:
| "We want to make the bridge safer for the users"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Seems pretty simple - sonar/lidar devices that detect dangerous
| ship vectors, the bridge already had gates and traffic control
| from some of the pictures.
|
| Probably cheaper to do, than even the loss of one or two
| containers off of that container ship. Never mind the cost in
| human lives.
| jrwiegand wrote:
| This was exactly what I was thinking, too. Systems could be set
| up to monitor the trajectory of objects moving around a
| structure and then alerting and closing bridges or tunnels.
| Balgair wrote:
| Fucking Rocket boat...
|
| Okay, story time. So, my brother was a law student in SF. He
| had a class on maritime law. They took at field trip to the
| Mare Island DHS office (I think) to learn more about the
| implementation of all the law they were learning.
|
| So, they learned, in response to the Cosco Busan oil spill (I
| think), DHS decided to put in a warning system that would track
| all the boats in the Bay and then alert the DHS office if any
| of them were going to crash into Frank's Crab Shack again. Look
| at the trajectories, guess the time, send out an alert to the
| whole office. Years are spent on this system, millions of
| dollars, lots of studies, yadda yadda yadda.
|
| The warning system they decided on, because this is the
| government and they know about lawyers, is that the whole
| office is going to have red flashing lights and a very loud
| voice come over the intra-office speakers saying 'CRASH
| IMMINENT". And then it'll just blare that notice until the S/W
| decides that the crash ain't happening anymore.
|
| So, my brother there and they are taking the tour and the alarm
| goes off and ... no one does a damn thing. And he's thinking
| that this is really strange. And the tour guide they have looks
| at the group of law students and explains the above. And then
| the tour guide goes and says ' but they forgot about the
| fucking Rocket Boat'
|
| So, in the Bay at that time, there was the Rocket Boat tour.
| You get on at Pier 39, you go on a tour at really high speeds,
| bumping your clam chowder out along the way. And to scare the
| tourists at the end, the pilot heads straight for Pier 39 and
| then turns away at just the last second. Tourists are scared,
| but happy, a bit wet. Everyone has a good time.
|
| Except for the DHS office and their automated crash system.
| Every. Single. Time that the Rocket Boat decided to scare the
| tourists, the alarm system would sound.
|
| So, since this is the government and you certainly cannot turn
| this millions of dollars system off now, nor can you really
| really be certain that the Rocket boat driver didn't actually
| just pass out from all the beer-only lunch he just had, the
| workers at the DHS office just had to endure the booming alarms
| and lights. Multiple times a day, nearly every day, all year
| long.
|
| So, I think an automated system is a great idea. But, for the
| sake of all the DHS drones: Please, make the system smart
| enough to deal with the Rocket Boat.
| peteradio wrote:
| Why don't they just fine the shit out of that rocket boat
| company every time they pull that outrageous prank? Or throw
| someone in jail. Who thinks that is in any an ok prank? Can
| you imagine someone doing that in a car? Its just a prank
| bro!
| Balgair wrote:
| I mean, I'm not the lawyer, my brother is. But I'll
| speculate all the same.
|
| I don't think that they are actually doing anything illegal
| [0]. It seems to be perfectly fine to pilot your boat
| anywhere you want to. Even if that means it looks like
| you're gonna run into the pier. It's not like they ever
| actually did run into the pier anyways.
|
| Also, per other conversations with my brother, maritime law
| is not like 'normal' law. When we say that the US
| constitution is the supreme law of the land, that isn't
| just a turn of phrase. That literally mean 'the _land_ '.
| Not the ocean. Maritime law is, from what I remember, the
| oldest law we have. And as such, things in maritime law
| aren't what you'd think.
|
| Like, if you want to impound a boat, they have these really
| really comically large boat-cuffs that you have to use. And
| you have to do these strange legal gymnastics to actually
| impound a boat. Because, well, it's a boat. You can just
| take it over the horizon and effectively the captain will
| just never be seen again. It's not like the land where it's
| hard to get to another jurisdiction. In a boat, it's really
| easy. That's kinda the point of a boat.
|
| Things like credit and ownership also work really funky
| too. Like, if you own the boat, but aren't actually on the
| boat when it goes out to sea, you're really just kinda
| hoping that the captain comes back. Not just due to freak
| storms, but also you really have to trust the captain. So
| things like credit and how money works on the sea are just
| different. Because it's so damn easy to just not come back.
|
| If any real lawyers want to join in, please do. Again, I'm
| not a maritime lawyer, my brother is.
|
| [0] To note here, the Rocket Boat company went bust in
| 2019, apparently. They're trying to bring it back, but seem
| to be struggling with the aftereffects of covid and
| whatnot.
| NohatCoder wrote:
| What you describe sounds like international waters, close
| enough to the pier to matter would be within US
| territorial waters. So if the relevant laws are not there
| it is purely a domestic issue.
| dhc02 wrote:
| It seems pretty clear from the video that something like this
| actually happened. The only vehicles left on the bridge at the
| time of impact were stationary emergency services vehicles with
| flashing lights. So it would appear they knew it was imminent
| and cleared the bridge (although they underestimated the extent
| of the damage the impact would cause).
| yifanl wrote:
| According to AP, the ship was able to issue a mayday and
| passengers of the bridge were warned:
| https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-53169b3...
|
| > The operators of the ship issued a mayday call moments before
| the crash that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, enabling
| authorities to limit vehicle traffic on the span, Maryland's
| governor said.
|
| I don't know how long "moments" was, but presumably about as
| much warning as any automated system could provide.
| justin66 wrote:
| https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-53169b3...
| tokai wrote:
| Insane that the pylons wasn't protected by artificial islands.
| pard68 wrote:
| I tend to agree, but also, what could one even do? I have seen
| videos of shipping containers going into the shore and they
| don't stop for a good hundred yards or more.
| tokai wrote:
| I don't know how they achieve it, but its best practise to
| protect bearing elements from collisions like this. There's
| like a whole subfield of bridge collision research.
| btbuildem wrote:
| If you think about this for a minute, you'll realize that what
| you're asking for is pretty much impossible.
|
| What would these artificial islands be made of? Sand, gravel,
| concrete rubble? This is a river, the constant current of the
| water erodes anything that resists it by staying in place.
| Piling up enough material to resist erosion and create a
| meaningful obstacle to 70000 tonnes in motion, that would
| significantly narrow and make shallow the navigable waterway.
| The only way to do this is to build giant underwater concrete
| towers -- basically the structures pylons typically rest on,
| the piers. Look up the process required to build these, it's
| quite an undertaking. They are engineered to withstand the
| pressure of ice floes every spring, they're not flimsy by any
| measure.
| tokai wrote:
| I have thought about it for hours by now, and read literature
| on the matter. It is definitely possible to build berms that
| protects a bridge from catastrophic failure in case of a ship
| collision, and it is widely done during modern bridge
| construction. Please be less sure of yourself when you
| clearly don't have any actual knowledge on the subject.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I'd love to see a few examples, since you're so versed on
| the subject. I'm not a civil engineer by any means, but I
| imagine the people who designed and built that bridge knew
| what they were doing. There are likely limitations imposed
| by the site bathymetry and other things we don't know
| about.
|
| You can get a good look at the aftermath here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WssFXRzRVLU
|
| I'll be interesting to see how they choose to rebuild it.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| There are real world examples of what it would look like,
| they're called "dolphins": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Dolphin_(structure)#/media/Fil...
|
| "The new bridge is protected by 36 dolphins: four large
| dolphins protecting the two main pylons supporting the
| cable-stayed main span plus 32 smaller dolphins
| protecting bridge piers for 1/4 mi (1/2 km) to either
| side of the main span"
| low_common wrote:
| "I have thought about it for hours by now, and read
| literature on the matter." Ah, the classic, pompous Hacker
| News user. The Baltimore Port Authority should've hired you
| to prevent this disaster - you're a genius!
| pgwhalen wrote:
| Seriously, this comment has to be satire.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| There are real world examples of what it would look like,
| they're called "dolphins": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolp
| hin_(structure)#/media/Fil...
|
| "The new bridge is protected by 36 dolphins: four large
| dolphins protecting the two main pylons supporting the cable-
| stayed main span plus 32 smaller dolphins protecting bridge
| piers for 1/4 mi (1/2 km) to either side of the main span"
| sp332 wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/how-key-b...
| There are some, but because the ship drifted in at an angle, it
| missed them.
| atsmyles wrote:
| Analysis and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk
| rayiner wrote:
| This is going to have a huge impact on traffic patterns in the
| mid Atlantic. The bridge carries 695 (the Baltimore beltway)
| across the river. Although I95 goes through Baltimore, 695 is one
| of two major bypass routes that's a more direct shot from places
| south of the city to places north of the city (the other being
| the Baltimore harbor tunnel carrying 895). Unlike the
| Philadelphia bridge span collapse recently, I don't foresee this
| bridge being rebuilt anytime soon.
| throwanem wrote:
| > Unlike the Philadelphia bridge span collapse recently, I
| don't foresee this bridge being rebuilt anytime soon.
|
| How come?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| In Philly, they sacrificed some of the road underneath it and
| narrowed the traffic lanes over the bridge to enable a very
| quick, albeit temporary repair. There's no such option for a
| span of this length over a river -- this is a decade long
| project that could potentially be sped up to be a years long
| one.
| throwanem wrote:
| Sure, 5-10 years makes sense especially considering it took
| 5 years to build last time. But GP's formulation seemed to
| suggest a considerably longer expectation, and that's more
| what I was wondering about.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I took it to mean considerably longer in relation to the
| bridge in Philly -- which of course it will be since that
| overpass reopened in ~2 weeks.
| rayiner wrote:
| I would be shocked if it was rebuilt in less than a
| decade. The Frederick Douglass bridge that opened
| recently in DC took 15 years. That's a long time for
| Baltimore to be without a key piece of infrastructure.
| jsumrall wrote:
| The design of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, specifically the
| tunnel part, makes a lot of sense now. Imagine a US navy port
| (Norfolk) being inaccessible if this happened there.
| boringg wrote:
| Right? Clearly it would be a significant national defense risk.
| Also allows for larger ships to get through.
|
| That said - It also makes for a very enjoyable drive with
| children - probably their main design parameter right?
| 5555624 wrote:
| Which is why there's a tunnel -- when Virginia looked at
| replacing the ferry that ran between the Eastern Shore and
| Norfolk/Virginia Beach, the US Navy objected to a bridge over
| fears it could collapse. (An accident, sabotage, etc.) That's
| also why I64 has a bridge-tunnel design, as well.
| devilbunny wrote:
| The Navy has long required that the sea lanes from the Norfolk
| Naval Shipyard and Newport News Shipbuilding to the ocean have
| a deep-draft passage with no bridge, for just that reason.
| S201 wrote:
| This was also a major concern around the construction of the
| Golden Gate bridge; that during a time of war an enemy could
| have destroyed it to trap a large portion of the Navy's Pacific
| Fleet in the bay.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I heard on the local radio here, with one of the DJs being an ex-
| cop, his contact with EMS said the driver of the boat called a
| mayday and said to clear the bridge. Nope, can't prove it, but I
| imagine it'll come out in the news soon.
|
| So, not intentional.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Sounds like they were able to stop traffic in time, which is
| why they know the precise number of missing people.
|
| They were construction workers fixing potholes.
| dpedu wrote:
| I'd expect that they have traffic cameras on the bridge that
| would allow them to know how many cars are missing.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A lot of these ships are controlled via GPS to keep them in the
| channels. I wonder if this crash will entail a software bug or
| system failure.
| tbihl wrote:
| This ship was under pilotage at the time.
|
| In the same way that airline captains don't sleep during
| takeoff or landing, the captain is in the bridge (and with the
| assistance of a harbor-specific pilot) for the entirety of
| maneuvering in and out of a harbor.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but they're usually relying on GPS, especially at
| night, even if they are at the controls. The controls are
| drive by wire anyways, even if they aren't using GPS plots.
| Godchi1d wrote:
| BUILD CHANNELS UNDER THESE BRIDGES!!! By digging out channels
| beneath BRIDGES that have large cargo ship traffic beneath them,
| these ships would run around, and/or hit a wall (depending on
| design) before ever getting close to bridges structural support
| components. Every city with bridges like these, with city, state
| AND federal funding, should begin construction on "guidance
| channels " IMMEDIATELY...
| low_common wrote:
| You good dude?
| G0dchi1d wrote:
| Every bridge with large cargo ship traffic beneath them should
| have channels designed to guide the commercial traffic, installed
| beneath them. Every city with bridges like these should, with
| state AND federal funding, should begin the process of
| constructing such "guidance channels" beneath these bridges
| IMMEDIATELY!!! It should be IMPOSSIBLE for Ships large enough to
| damage bridges to even be able to come into contact with these
| bridges. The idea that the ship itself has 100% control as to
| whether it strikes a bridge or not, IS INSANE.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| The problem is momentum. These ships weigh thousands of tons so
| something as simple as coming to a stop is difficult. The ship
| probably knew it would collide with the bridge well in advance
| but had no way stop of avert the ship due to it's sheer size.
| mherchel wrote:
| Doesn't have to stop them, just has to redirect them
| 16bytes wrote:
| What you are proposing isn't feasible from an engineering
| perspective. This isn't like putting a guard rail up.
|
| To make damage from collisions "impossible" you'd have to build
| embankments up so high that the bridge would effectively be
| sitting on solid ground the entire way across and no ships
| could pass anywhere.
|
| Sure, there are ways to mitigate collisions and the new bridge
| they build will no doubt be more resilient, but it's not
| realistic to completely eliminate such risk.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| How about instead of adding "bumpers," it becomes required
| for a tug boat to help guide past infrastructure spans like
| bridges, rail, gas.
| 16bytes wrote:
| There is already something like this in use: harbor pilots,
| who have specialized knowledge of specific ports and board
| vessels to navigate them through critical transit zones. It
| is reported that there were pilots on board navigating at
| the time of the collision.
|
| Tugs are used in tight locations, but they can only change
| a ship's speed at a very slow rate compared to that ship's
| engines. By analogy, you can pull a train car and get it
| moving by yourself, but if that thing is moving at 5mph you
| aren't stopping it by yourself in any reasonable distance.
| boringg wrote:
| This is a tragedy for those involved.
|
| My rough calculus points that the amount of force of this
| collision is on par with a large scale natural disaster. Everyone
| being surprised at the bridge collapsing needs to reconcile with
| the amount of force that struck the bridge - it is a truly
| significant amount of Newtons that hit the bridge. More than a
| train going from full speed to a full stop. Unbelievable amount
| of force.
|
| I am also a bit surprised at how many people don't grasp this or
| grasp engineering, magnitude of forces and design principles.
| swader999 wrote:
| And many here have engineer in their job title.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| There are a lot of types of engineering, and some of them are
| VERY far away from civil/structural engineering.
| low_common wrote:
| Your last sentence is pretentious and condescending.
| boringg wrote:
| To be fair I am truly surprised at the comment thread here
| and people being surprised that it collapsed and the lack of
| understanding of magnitude of forces. I always think of HN as
| a fairly educated group with a large portion of engineers
| (skewed heavily towards software which doesn't always have a
| background in the physical environment).
|
| I don't intend to sound pretentious or condescending. Maybe
| its more that I need to reconcile with my own expectations of
| the community level of knowledge/domain of expertise.
|
| I rather have a high bar of expectations than a low bar
| though to be honest.
| HaZeust wrote:
| The absolute mass of container ships are inconceivable by
| default - it's really worth repeating how much weight and
| force they bear.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| It's likely that a lot of people don't understand just how huge
| these ships are. I'd imagine that much of HN doesn't have a ton
| of firsthand experience with shipping yards or even close
| friends/relatives that work on these things. In my experience,
| almost nothing hides just how large it is than a giant ship.
| boringg wrote:
| That's fair. If you don't live in a major port city you
| likely don't understand.
|
| Maybe we should reframe it to a more familiar territory. It
| could be the equivalent of a second tier unsophisticated,
| unsuspecting, dated website with a relatively small amount of
| traffic hitting it being hit by a state sponsored actor DDoS
| attack and expecting the website to survive.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| I'm with you on this one, I grew up around boats and
| remember the dread of even getting near a containership in
| a 16 foot Boston Whaler. That fear was more primal and
| daunting than sailing home during a tornado watch.
| marpstar wrote:
| My family and I drove through the Ports of LA/Long Beach on
| vacation last summer. A port is basically an entire city
| dedicated to getting things in/out of the water. Takes 15-20
| minutes to drive through. You can't imagine the number of
| cranes/lifts. It's worth the drive through.
|
| This ship was carrying ~5,000 TEU (Trailer Equivalent Units).
| Imagine 5,000 fully packed semi trucks crashing into the
| single upright of that bridge.
|
| Even at 7.5 knots (~10mph) the bridge stood no chance.
| tasuki wrote:
| Would it even stand a chance at 1 mph? If not, what is the
| speed that would make it imaginable for the bridge not to
| collapse?
| adameasterling wrote:
| > Everyone being surprised at the bridge collapsing needs to
| reconcile with the amount of force that struck the bridge ... I
| am also a bit surprised at how many people don't grasp this or
| grasp engineering, magnitude of forces and design principles.
|
| A spokesman for CalTrans claimed today that Bay Bridge could
| have taken the same hit without damage, thanks to fenders that
| protects all pylons for all bridges in the San Francisco Bay
| Area (1). Cargo ships are heavy, yes, but it appears we have
| the technology to prevent bridge collapses due to these sorts
| of collisions today.
|
| 1. "The Bay Bridge's fenders insulated the span during the 2007
| incident, so that the Cosco Busan ship struck a bumper, never
| hitting the bridge itself, Ney said. He noted that fenders on
| Bay Area bridges should be able to handle a ship traveling at 8
| knots, the velocity at which the ship hit the Francis Scott Key
| span."
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/baltimore-bridge...
| quasarj wrote:
| "A ship traveling at 8 knots" is a meaningless statement. You
| need to know how bit the ship is...
| justin66 wrote:
| > More than a train going from full speed to a full stop.
|
| I wonder. This ship might have massed about ten times a typical
| freight train on the heavy side, but the train is going to be
| moving a lot faster than a ship navigating in port, right?
| Solvency wrote:
| > I am also a bit surprised at how many people don't grasp this
| or grasp engineering, magnitude of forces and design
| principles.
|
| Who are you even referring to? Are you just inventing a
| population of people in your mind to flex against here? Trust
| me, people get it.
| commentenjoyer wrote:
| First time here?
| pgwhalen wrote:
| Seems a bit gauche to link to them, but there are comments
| all over this thread, including top level ones.
| namewithhe1d wrote:
| https://ibb.co/BrYQhQJ
|
| Looks like normal operations after departing container berth.
| Concerning is the speed ramping up.
| r721 wrote:
| BBC liveblog: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-
| canada-68663071
| gabesullice wrote:
| A similar incident happened about a week ago in Turkey:
| https://youtu.be/YDOMhCCpTnQ?si=ebghOqwVUzmmMIrd
| paddy_m wrote:
| Youtube tracking analysis from a knowledgeable mariner.
|
| He says that at about 1:24 AM the ship loses power (from video
| feed) while traveling 8.5 knots.
|
| at 1:25.30 power is restored.
|
| at 12:25.59 the ship shows smoke. The ship has already drifted in
| the channel. It is believed that at this time the ship applied
| full reverse power as evidenced by the black smoke. (My analysis:
| the ship drifted but hasn't turned in the channel, more of a
| translation)
|
| By 1:26.45 the ship has obviously turned in the channel pointing
| at the pier. Full reverse would cause prop walk to change heading
| angle;
|
| 1:28.52 impact at 7.6 Knots. Camera says 1:28.52, AIS reports the
| ship still moving at 1:29:35
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
| secstate wrote:
| Does that mean this was effectively captain error? Like in
| response to a power outage the decision was made to try to
| reverse and rather than arrest forward momentum it just pushed
| their forward vector into the piling?
| paddy_m wrote:
| I would tend to think so. The pilot should have anticipated
| prop walk and known that the ship had no chance of stopping
| before the bridge.
|
| I'm trying to find a color coded current map. Wind too. I
| wouldn't expect wind or current to cause the pronounced
| heading change that is visible. The drift seems possible.
|
| Note: I'm an experienced dinghy/keelboat sailor, but lack
| virtually any experience driving boats under power, much less
| commercial vessels
| secstate wrote:
| yeah, noted. But it does seem like the heading change was
| so dramatic and the smoke pouring out after power recovery
| that something happened with the prop. And while it may
| have been currents, the lack of heading change before the
| smoke seems to suggest there was an intervention that
| caused heading change.
|
| Ship travel, much like orbital mechanics, are so often non-
| intuitive if you're not familiar with how much effort it
| takes to make significant speed changes vs. heading
| changes. And speed changes often affect the heading as well
| if you're not careful.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| It seems the excellent windy.com has wind and current data
| from the incident still available. Looks like current was
| <0.2 kts and wind was 6 kts south-east. So both should be
| completely negligible.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Checks out.
|
| .2knots/hour = 405 yards/hour
|
| It was 4 minutes from power loss to impact.
|
| 405 yards/15 = 27 yards. And that's if the ship instantly
| accelerated to a 0.2 kt drift, which it wouldn't. Wind
| acceleration on the vessel than current.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Captain, or pilot? In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local
| pilot comes on board to guide the ship. Is this their
| responsibility?
| cududa wrote:
| I too, have read about Baltimore pilots for the first time
| today. If you'd read a bit further, the Pilots use either
| intercoms and sometimes radios to send instructions to the
| captain while they're elsewhere on the ship. If they were
| using intercoms, and there was no power, that would do it
| rdtsc wrote:
| > In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local pilot comes on
| board to guide the ship. Is this their responsibility?
|
| I would doubt the pilot would have ordered the power to the
| ship to be cut and for everything to go dark right before
| hitting the bridge. Pretty sure they were probably telling
| them to navigate away from the pylon.
| gumby wrote:
| Yes, they have the responsibility, not the captain, as
| evidenced by the specific insurance they carry.
|
| Of course, lawyers will try to spread the blame around (who
| chose the pilot, did captain's actions or orders somehow
| get in the way of the pilot; did captain not ensure engines
| were working properly...). But the base responsibility lies
| with the pilot.
|
| It probably helps the captain that this was a ship owned
| and operated by a very big vertically integrated company
| (Maersk). Most ships are owned by smaller companies with a
| few (10-150) hulls and then chartered out. And while in
| this case the ship _was_ chartered (along with crew) I bet
| Maersk 's systems are stronger than your average
| charterer's.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I thought the pilot only offered "guidance" to avoid
| responsibility. I learned that from a documentary on the
| Panama Canal.
|
| Is that just a Panama Canal thing? Or should I find
| better documentaries?
| shagie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot
|
| Panama is the exception
|
| > Legally, the master has full responsibility for the
| safe navigation of their vessel, even when a pilot is on
| board. If they have clear grounds that the pilot may
| jeopardize the safety of navigation, they can relieve the
| pilot from their duties and ask for another pilot, or, if
| not required to have a pilot on board, navigate the
| vessel without one. In every case, during the time passed
| aboard for operation, the pilot will remain under the
| master's authority, and always out of the "ship's command
| chain." The pilot remains aboard as an important and
| indispensable part of the bridge team. Only in transit of
| the Panama Canal does the pilot have full responsibility
| for the navigation of the vessel.
| throwup238 wrote:
| You might have misunderstood the difference between
| controlling the ship and commanding it. The Panama Canal
| Authority pilot controls navigation and maneuvering to
| get through the canal but the captain is still in command
| of the vessel and ultimately responsible for it.
|
| Canal accidents cost so much that they're each
| individually investigated and insurance companies fight
| over who is liable. Sometimes it's the pilot's fault and
| ACP's insurance pays out, sometimes it's the shipping
| company's insurance, and sometimes they split the cost.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| This news report [1] confirms there were _two_ pilots at
| the time of the accident. Baltimore Port runs a dock pilot
| from the Key Bridge to the port itself, and after the Key
| Bridge, a harbor pilot who takes the ship (I believe the
| rule is any vessel > 100 tons, and all non-domestic ships
| of any tonnage must by Maryland state law be piloted in
| this manner) out to the mouth of the bay.
|
| The after-accident report and insurer and re-insurer
| wranglings will be a fascinating read, I'm sure. It will be
| a miracle if the taxpayers escape unscathed for the
| rebuilding of the transit spanning the harbor, and it falls
| entirely upon the insurers and re-insurers.
|
| As dramatic as this accident was though, and the many
| parallels I can draw from its lessons to software
| engineering, IT operations, cybersecurity and so on, I'm
| not as sanguine believing it will really drive home to
| organization leaderships the evergreen advice to pay down
| your tech debt, maintenance matters, organizational
| culture/ _esprit de corps_ counts, the operational teams
| are just as important as the engineering teams, _etc._
|
| [1] https://fox59.com/news/national-world/cargo-ship-hits-
| baltim...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| How common are power outages on ships? I get that the captain
| might not have responded to it correctly but that seems like a
| thing that shouldn't happen, at least in my completely
| uneducated opinion.
| paddy_m wrote:
| It shouldn't happen. There will be investigations. I think
| that having a properly operating ship is the captain's
| responsibility.
|
| But the ship's pilot [1] (not captain) should know exactly
| how the boat will handle and the exact course of action.
| Pilots are extremely well paid ($200-$400k) and the tests are
| very stringent. Friends have told me that the Narraganset Bay
| pilot test involves drawing every shipping navigation bouy on
| a map by hand to within ~200 yards from memory alone,
| compass, ruler and scaled map provided.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Where do you get those salary numbers from? The info about
| this "Dali" ship is not private: [0], and it lists the
| master's salary as $10,200 per month.
|
| [0]
| https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9697428/seafarers
| TylerE wrote:
| The pilot is employed by the port/government, not the
| ship. They drive to just outside the entrance, then they
| get off onto a tugboat or some other small utility
| vessel.
| CalChris wrote:
| Harbor pilots are licensed by the state (Maryland)
| require a degree from one of the maritime colleges, deck
| license, ..., are represented by a pilots union
| (Association of Maryland Pilots) but are employed
| independently.
| emilyst wrote:
| I believe the parent comment is referring to the harbor
| pilot job specifically.
| shagie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot#Compensation
|
| > The Florida Alliance of Maritime Organizations reported
| that Florida pilots' annual salaries range from
| US$100,000 to US$400,000, on par with other US states
| that have large ports. Columbia Bar pilots earn
| approximately US$180,000 per year. A 2008 review of pilot
| salaries in the United States showed that pay ranged from
| about US$250,000 to over US$500,000 per year.
| brewdad wrote:
| Columbia Bar pilots are grossly underpaid.
| shagie wrote:
| Having visited the Columbia River Maritime Museum (I
| would strongly recommend if there) https://www.crmm.org -
| that is 100% correct. Its a place that they send _other_
| pilots to do things like rough water training.
| sib wrote:
| In this case, a seemingly pedantic distinction matters:
|
| Pilot != Master
|
| _Pilots_ are very highly paid
| jordanb wrote:
| According to this book: https://www.amazon.com/Tankship-
| Tromedy-Impending-Disasters-...
|
| It is quite common and vessels often have outages that leave
| them Not Under Command. Usually they are safely at sea when
| this happens and they can drift for hours without causing
| problems. But of course there's always a possibility of it
| happening at exactly the wrong moment.
|
| The reasons for this are the usual: lack of redundancy, lack
| of maintenance, overworked and understaffed crews, etc. etc.
| The book lays out how ships are pretty much designed to be
| floating disasters and the Class societies (essentially
| privatized regulators) are in the pockets of the builders,
| and they are so captured that they make rules that make it
| difficult to make safe vessels.
|
| For instance, he was trying to design multi-screw vessels but
| the rules now assume single-screwed ships and it can be
| impossible to design in additional shaft alleys and still
| conform.
| ianburrell wrote:
| It wouldn't help with this accident, but you would think
| that the electronics would be on batteries. It wouldn't be
| too hard to have rack of batteries that would power the
| lights, instruments, radios, and sensors. Doesn't help if
| the propulsion or steering go out, but does make easier to
| know whats going on.
| myself248 wrote:
| At least in small craft, bow thrusters are usually
| electric, with local batteries charged from the main
| engine room. I don't know what large craft are like, but
| it doesn't seem unreasonable that a bow thruster may
| remain operable even if the main engine fails. Clearly
| that's not required or they would've had it and used it,
| but it could be required if the regulations didn't suck.
|
| Furthermore, steering could absolutely have an electric
| backup for the hydraulic pumps that power the main
| steering gear. As long as there's some forward speed
| through the water, the rudder should work. But again,
| backups clearly aren't required or they would've worked
| here.
|
| Steer-by-wire cars are required to have all sorts of
| redundancy so they're almost as safe as steering-shaft
| cars in case of an engine failure. This is a 9,900TEU
| ship with a 41480 kw powerplant. That a ship with so much
| more destructive potential is allowed to operate without
| the same level of redundancy as a $90k Audi, is
| unconscionable.
| paddy_m wrote:
| The difference for a car and drive by wire system is that
| the failure mode of control systems on cars is normally
| catastrophic and dangerous. If a car loses steering or
| brakes, it will hit something within seconds 95% of the
| time.
|
| That ship spent 1 (4:30 to 5:30) hour of a presumably
| 10-20 day voyage in a critical control section. The tugs
| left the ship right around 5:08 (43 seconds into the
| video). A much better policy for this case would be to
| have required the tugs stay with the boat until it passed
| the main span safely.
|
| There were no doubt maintenance issues that led to this
| accident, but it is exceedingly rare for these types of
| failures to cause this type of catastrophic result.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Damage is less likely, but much more destructive. Same as
| for a nuclear reactor.
|
| It's not clear why adding ~$100k to the cost of a billion
| dollar ship is unreasonable
| throwup238 wrote:
| Aircraft carriers are billion dollar ships, these are
| not. The most expensive container ship tops out at ~$250
| million and the one that crashed today is more like
| $80-150 million. The propulsion systems on these vessels
| cost tens of millions. $100k wouldn't even pay for the
| material costs of a rudder.
|
| I don't know enough about the cost and safety tradeoffs
| made in the design of these ships to comment but your
| numbers are orders of magnitude off from both directions.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Right. It's not like the ship owners (or, more saliently,
| their insurers) _want_ things like this to happen.
|
| Second-guessing the marine engineers in this case is like
| the people post-9/11 who argued that future buildings
| should be designed to withstand the impact of a wide-body
| jetliner fully loaded with fuel.
|
| It's basically not a serious argument.
| jordanb wrote:
| Really recommend you read Tankership Tromedy which _was
| written_ by a marine engineer. You don 't even have to
| find a copy, the author put a PDF on the internet:
|
| http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_tankersh
| ip_...
| vkou wrote:
| Neither the insurers nor the owners of the ship will be
| on the hook for the full set of damages this inflicted.
|
| Thanks to that, they aren't performing an accurate
| cost/benefit analysis.
| pixl97 wrote:
| While the ship is $200Mish, how much is the cargo also
| worth? If the ship had went to the bottom in this event
| the cleanup would take 10x as long and release god knows
| what pollutants.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Based on what I've read the container ship was only half
| loaded (5k out of 10k TEU) and most of the containers
| were empty or lightly loaded. I don't think ships of that
| size can even navigate those waters fully loaded.
|
| AFAIK the water around the bridge is only like 50 feet
| deep and the ship itself is about 150 ft high. It
| wouldn't even really sink, just get stuck on the bottom.
| A crane ship would come unload it and then tugboats would
| pull it out.
|
| The worst case scenario though does take a long time if
| it gets fully grounded and stuck beyond the ability of
| tug boats to pull it out. A company specializing in
| marine salvage has to come in to cut it up in place and
| haul the ship away piece by piece. They use large cutting
| chains that they pull back and forth to cut through the
| metal. It's a fascinating process:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndr2a7AQ8b4
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I know this may seem pedantic, but to image that the cost
| of an additional screw or screw+engine at 100k for
| vessels like this is patently absurd. Just trying to
| offer some explanation if you're confused at the
| responses you're getting. Requiring such a thing would
| probably have a measurable impact on the global economy,
| even if all current vessels were grandfathered in and
| exempt.
| myself248 wrote:
| All valid points. Tugs are quite a reasonable option.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > That a ship with so much more destructive potential is
| allowed to operate without the same level of redundancy
| as a $90k Audi, is unconscionable.
|
| Would you still believe this if it was demonstrated that
| the system lacking redundancy was - due to factors beyond
| the scope of this conversation - more safe by an order of
| magnitude than the steering system that includes
| redundancy but in a different medium?
|
| Put differently: do you think the Space Shuttle should
| have had ejection seats? If yes, what about an Airbus
| A320 flying a normal commercial route?
| jordanb wrote:
| The problem is with steering. The rudder on a ship this
| big is going to be wall of steel several stories tall
| with gears as big as car.
|
| Warships have several independent backup steering options
| reducing finally to a worm gear at the top of the shaft
| with a winch handle big enough to put a gang of men on
| it. But ships like this will have none of that. They will
| have a small wheel or joystick on the bridge and if power
| goes out the rudder will definitely stay in the last
| commanded position until power is restored. Even if they
| had auxiliary steering they would not have the crew to
| man those positions.
|
| This ship would have alternate diesel power plants called
| "mules" (think APUs on aircraft). It's possible that when
| the lights came back on that was because they got a mule
| started.
|
| But really if we don't want accidents like this to happen
| the ship should have redundancy. A 10,000 TEU container
| ship is one of the largest and heaviest moving structures
| ever created by man. Why is it acceptable that it is
| driven by exactly one engine powering one screw in front
| of one rudder?
|
| By the way a ship this big with only one screw is very
| difficult to maneuver at slow speeds. They pretty much
| have to be going at least 14-15knots to have any rudder
| authority.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Emergency steering gear is required on every commercial
| vessel and is regularly tested. We will have to wait for
| the investigation to see what actually happened.
| mlyle wrote:
| > But really if we don't want accidents like this to
| happen the ship should have redundancy. A 10,000 TEU
| container ship is one of the largest and heaviest moving
| structures ever created by man. Why is it acceptable that
| it is driven by exactly one engine powering one screw in
| front of one rudder?
|
| Perhaps because we have a whole lot of them going and a
| very low frequency of events like this.
|
| Maybe there's some lighter weight interventions we could
| do that would further halve the risk of something like
| this happening that are less costly than fully redundant
| engine and drive.
|
| They're supposed to have emergency steering gear. Why
| didn't it work? Maybe ships should have an auxiliary
| genset running while near land.
| jordanb wrote:
| > Perhaps because we have a whole lot of them going and a
| very low frequency of events like this.
|
| This is literally the second major loss of
| control/allision incident _this month_.
|
| https://www.tradewindsnews.com/casualties/out-of-control-
| con...
| pests wrote:
| Seems pretty low to me. How many is too many?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Do we need kindergartens to be safe? How many dead kids
| is too many? /s
|
| Seriously, in England it is a legal requirement to have
| redundant brakes on a freaking _bicycle_. A dude that hit
| a grandma with a bicycle due to 1 non-functional brake
| went to prison. But a giant container ship needs nothing?
|
| What is the cost of fixing this bridge and + lost
| lifetime earning of all the people who dies +
| compensation to their families? Is that really cheaper
| than installing batteries plus electric motor?
|
| Now imagine this ship would hit a bridge in daytime, when
| it's clogged with traffic?
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Cost/benefit analyses are just a fact of life. I see your
| point, but without really considering the question we
| don't know what the proper response is. It is not obvious
| to me that we need to mandate backup power systems, there
| are an awful lot of ships entering ports around the world
| each day and very few bridge collapses.
| pests wrote:
| Its not obvious to me either. Let alone the opportunity
| cost.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The problem is that the bridge collapses that _do_ happen
| are just catastrophic. The economic impact alone will be
| massive for Baltimore. But will the responsible parties
| pay out that damage in full? Unlikely.
|
| Cost-benefit analyses aren't designed to evaluate the
| total risk a business venture presents to everyone who
| could possibly be involved; they're designed to evaluate
| the risk posed by a problem that will launch lawsuits
| that will play out in courts for years, if not decades.
| Meanwhile, some injured parties settle for pennies on the
| dollar, laws change, and in the absolute worst-case
| scenario, major shareholders draw down their positions in
| the corporate venture that caused the problem. The world
| keeps on spinning, and just _maybe_ some regulatory
| agency will pay attention to the report issued by the
| likes of the NTSB and USCG.
|
| The process does not adequately protect the public.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| I have lived in two different cities where no
| kindergarten age children have died getting hit by cars
| outside of their school. Last year I saw a child fall off
| a raised garden bed at his school, hit his head, and
| leave in an ambulance. I never found out what happened as
| I was just visiting that small town.
|
| Children die at or going to/from kindergarten a few times
| a year I bet in the US.
| Reason077 wrote:
| It's a legal requirement to have brakes on both wheels of
| your bicycle. That's not the same thing as _redundancy_.
| Braking performance is significantly reduced if you can
| only brake on one wheel, so both brakes need to be
| functional to stop quickly and safely.
|
| And the dude went to prison because he hit and killed a
| grandma while riding with reckless disregard for the
| safety of pedestrians. The brake thing didn't help, but
| it was a side story.
| bmitc wrote:
| > That's not the same thing as redundancy
|
| It is. Redundancy doesn't necessitate the redundant
| option being identical to the first.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"Redundancy doesn 't necessitate the redundant option
| being identical to the first."_
|
| Yes. In fact, in a redundant system, using different
| designs or technology is often an advantage, so that a
| failure mode that affects one system is unlikely to
| affect the other.
|
| But if something is redundant, it is "able to be omitted
| without loss of function". Front and back brakes on a
| bike are not there for redundancy. They are components of
| the _same_ braking system: without both in service, they
| don 't work as well.
|
| Or to put it another way, the front brake isn't there as
| a spare in case the back brake fails. It's there because
| without brakes on _both_ wheels, you can't stop quickly
| in an emergency.
| lolc wrote:
| On pavement, when the front brake performs well and is
| operated near optimal power, the back tire will not have
| traction. The back brake is entirely redundant in that
| case.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| Seriously, in England there are a lot more bicycles than
| ships (not to mention the differences in training and
| experience).
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > What is the cost of fixing this bridge and + lost
| lifetime earning of all the people who dies +
| compensation to their families? Is that really cheaper
| than installing batteries plus electric motor?
|
| I don't mean to contribute to this already-too-charged
| discussion any more than to say that the answer to this
| question is not as obvious as you think it is. If
| anything, I would bet that the former is less expensive
| than the latter, and I say that with immense sadness.
| Does that make sense?
| bmitc wrote:
| And this bridge being down will shutdown the port and
| reroute all automobile traffic that used to travel across
| it for months and the bridge itself will require design
| rebuilding, all of which will be extremely costly
| economically.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Biden has said that the Federal government will pay to
| rebuild the bridge, in order to get it done quickly.
|
| But presumably they will ultimately seek reimbursement
| from the Dali's insurers. As will the Port of Baltimore
| and anyone else who has suffered damages.
| peteradio wrote:
| Conspiracy... some adversary is waiting for opportunities
| during unfavorable/aberrant conditions and triggering
| simple failures at impossibly inopportune times. Without
| any redundancy, conditions it looks like a freak
| accident. It would be interesting if you could come up
| with a likelihood for each conditions to have overlapped
| temporally. If someone comes to the conclusion that its
| possible to create the triggered failures it would be
| prudent to forbid sailing in conditions that might lead
| to these supposed "fly under the radar attacks".
| zrm wrote:
| > Maybe there's some lighter weight interventions we
| could do that would further halve the risk of something
| like this happening that are less costly than fully
| redundant engine and drive.
|
| Redundancy doesn't inherently have to cost a lot more.
| For example, if you have three engines driving three
| props, they can each be 1/3 as large, and not necessarily
| weigh much more if at all. But then if you lose one, you
| lose 1/3 power rather than experiencing total loss of
| control.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Redundancy doesn't inherently have to cost a lot more.
| For example, if you have three engines driving three
| props, they can each be 1/3 as large, and not necessarily
| weigh much more if at all.
|
| Yah, from aviation everyone moved to twins because tri-
| jets and four engine jets were too expensive in
| comparison. Things don't scale up or down perfectly; in
| practice you end up with more maintenance.
|
| But it seems like here they lost steering, so maybe
| there's something better we can do to keep steering more
| of the time (the cutover to emergency steering gear isn't
| instantaneous or perfect).
| supportengineer wrote:
| >> worm gear at the top of the shaft with a winch handle
| big enough to put a gang of men on it
|
| They showed us one such station, on the USS Hornet in
| Alameda, it it in the officers' dining room.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Wouldn't a ship like this have bow thrusters? Seems like
| otherwise it would be impossible to get into port without
| a tug.
| wiml wrote:
| My understanding is that they simply use a tug when
| they're maneuvering by the dock. That's what a lot of
| tugs do all day.
| bmitc wrote:
| Thanks for the link to that book. I don't know if it's the
| because of this catastrophe, but it looks to be unobtanium
| at the moment. Will have to find it in the library.
|
| > lack of redundancy
|
| This is what I am surprised at from many angles. It seems
| to me that the ship, the port (in the form of lack of
| tugboats), and the bridge (in the form of lack of secondary
| protection of the pillars) all had a lack of redundancy and
| secondary options.
| jordanb wrote:
| The author GPLed it and put it on the internet at one
| point: http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_t
| ankership_...
| bmitc wrote:
| Oh, nice. Thanks for the heads up there and again for the
| book reference.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| Yeah that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
| These ships are built to very rigorous maritime engineering
| standards.
| dmoy wrote:
| We had a 100-200 car ferry here in Seattle lose power and run
| into an island last year.
|
| I think it was something like bad fuel killing the generator.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Probably not the case here, but one possibility could be
| land-based remote hacking. [1]
|
| [1] - https://warontherocks.com/2021/10/cant-sail-away-from-
| cyber-... (2021)
| peterleiser wrote:
| I was curious about power outages as well, and why tugboats
| aren't required for all container ships that navigate under
| bridges. I'm not arguing that tugboats MUST be mandated; just
| wondering about the cost/benefit analysis. This claims that
| power outages are more common now (but doesn't cite
| sources/stats) in areas (specifically California) where
| diesel fuel is required, rather than bunker fuel:
| https://baykeeper.org/news/column/tugs-test-towing-giant-
| shi... It also makes it clear that relying on tugboats to be
| on standby and "swoop in to the rescue" is seriously wishful
| thinking where bridge safety is concerned. This article from
| 2019 is about a power failure due to an Oil Mist Detector
| that didn't have a "harbour mode" option of keeping the
| engine running at reduced RPM so you can still maneuver. It
| also shows the link between engine failure and a need for
| tugboats under "lessons learned": "- Although it is tempting
| to free harbour tugs as quickly as possible, in the
| restricted waters of a small port their assistance can be
| invaluable should something go wrong." On the other hand,
| what safety or economic issues do tugboats cause? It will
| probably become a topic of discussion or investigation at
| least.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The video is surreal, it looks like it barely bumps the bridge
| and 2 seconds later the entire thing is gone. I don't know what
| I was expecting, the bridge just looked extremely fragile,
| makes me wonder what other bridges are at risk of an event like
| this.
| danpalmer wrote:
| It's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be in
| something moving so slowly. I say somewhat, because when
| you're up close it's much more obvious, but you're right that
| on a video it doesn't look like much.
| hangonhn wrote:
| The same go for cars. I was hit by a car which was already
| slowing down but over ran the line and hit me. The car
| couldn't have been going more than 10 mph but it was enough
| force to fracture my knee (the fracture type is also
| colloquially known as a bumper fracture).
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _It 's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be
| in something moving so slowly._
|
| Reminder: Kinetic Energy = 1/2mv^2
|
| Squaring numbers can make them big in a hurry.
| dweymouth wrote:
| But in this case with slow speed, it's the massive
| (literally) amount of mass of the cargo ship that gives
| it an un-intuitively large amount of energy.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| 8kn isn't super slow
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's 10 mph which is pretty slow as speeds go.
| euroderf wrote:
| Slow-but-irresistible force meets movable object.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| This disconnect happens with boats quite a lot. For
| example, I can, by myself, pull a 45 foot grand banks
| trawler in shallow water. I know because I've done so.
|
| But at even very low speeds, I cannot stop it from hitting
| a pier. I have not tried to do this, but every harbor
| master has a bunch of stories about people trying to do so
| and getting a leg or an arm or something squished and
| pulverized.
|
| People who are not boat people rarely recognize these sorts
| of dangers, which is why so many get hurt on boats. "I can
| push us off the dock, so I can definitely keep us from
| hitting it." Nope, Sir Isaac Newton says you're wrong.
| paddy_m wrote:
| To anyone reading this who isn't an experienced boater:
|
| If you are invited onto someone else's boat, sit down and
| shut up during docking, don't talk to friends, let the
| captain concentrate. Don't help, if the captain wants you
| to do something, they will let you know. If you think you
| know better than the captain, and this advice is unknown
| to you, you don't know better. Being a good guest during
| docking shows experience and helps get an invite back.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| This advice also translates for general aviation during
| takeoff, landing and taxiing.
| CIPHERSTONE wrote:
| This is great advice. For myself, docking in windy
| situations can be nerve racking. The old adage is to only
| dock as fast as your willing to hit the pier, and for me
| this means slow as hell.
|
| I always let guests know exactly what I want them to do,
| and to your point, it's mainly to sit tight and let me
| focus.
| EB-Barrington wrote:
| Wind, current, tides, your own boat at risk as well as
| other people's boats alongside... docking can certainly
| get the heart pumping.
|
| (Liveaboard cruiser here)
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Screwing around during docking is a great way to get to
| swim to shore at an unspecified later date.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Similar to stay quiet if the car is about to merge into
| traffic. But with a boat the stakes are 100,000 times
| greater due to the huge momentum and that it would be
| gliding and not slowing down like a wheeled vehicle on
| land.
| jml78 wrote:
| Take things slow so you aren't the show.
|
| I have a 44ft sailboat. Docking is not easy. People do
| not realize how difficult it can be
| organsnyder wrote:
| Given how hard I find docking my 16-foot bowrider if
| there's more than a light breeze, I can only imagine.
| tetha wrote:
| This hit me a a bit ago - you can't really tell how big
| ships are if you just see pictures of them on sea. I
| recently hit this in real life. Yeah it's a ship. Oh.
| It's like 3 - 4 times as tall as I am above water. And it
| goes 2-3 stories down. And holy hell, a crows nest 30
| meters up is... really high up?
|
| And we got the good tour, because we had a severe storm
| warning as we visited that ship - the kinda storm in
| which gusts stop you in your tracks and forces you to
| lean into it to not fall over. Was a great experience. I
| wouldn't want to be up there with that kinda wind.
|
| And this was a medium sized clipper, somewhat on the
| small size.
|
| And based off of that, I kind of want to see a retired
| battleship or an aircraft carrier. Because now I have an
| idea of how dumbfounded I'll be at those kinda
| dimensions. It just doesn't appear that big on photos!
| gottorf wrote:
| Landlubbers are accustomed to momentum (p = mv) behaving
| in a certain way instinctively from years of experience,
| where the heavier something is, the more frictional force
| against it from the ground, and therefore the mass
| behaves a certain way. This breaks down once the expected
| friction changes a lot, e.g. trying to stop a moving car
| or, like you said, a boat in water. I'd imagine it's the
| same thing in space, where a slowly-moving but massive
| object would surprise someone at their inability to stop
| it.
| major505 wrote:
| Force = mass * acceleration, it might be slow but how much
| does a container shop weighs? 100, 200 thousand tons?
| hgfghj wrote:
| That ship had a 10,000 TEU capacity and was actually hauling
| a little under 5,000 TEUs. An empty container weighs a little
| over 5,000lbs, and a full one can be up to 67,000lbs.
|
| If you do the math, you find that it's just an astronomical
| amount of momentum, and there's no effective defense for a
| bridge that needs support in more than 30 or so feet of
| water.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Throwback to the scene in The Day After Tomorrow where the
| cargo ship comes to an almost instant halt after impacting
| a bus wreck under water. For some reason it managed to
| stand out as ridiculous even in that movie.
| peteradio wrote:
| Somebody should do a side-by-side of that scene with this
| threads scene in gif.
| Gare wrote:
| Speed 2: Cruise Control on the other hand:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBxaGB65TB8
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there's no effective defense for a bridge that needs
| support in more than 30 or so feet of water_
|
| You deflect it. Failing at that, you direct the force into
| destroying the ship.
|
| Of course, the best solution is no in-water pylons. But
| that isn't always feasible.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| > direct the force into destroying the ship
|
| Nice immovable object you've got there.
| samstave wrote:
| Thank FN gosh that those TEUs were likely ~mostly empty
| returns.
|
| If thems be full, that guy would be illegally parked for
| far longer.
|
| --
|
| What is the traffick-routing-around plan look like? (both
| sea and land, helicopters cry in lack of TEU)
| samstave wrote:
| Jeasus - seriously - if that was an inbound shipment then
| it would be worse - this _appears_ to have been leaving -
| which would infer that the TEUs were more empty than
| full.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _there's no effective defense for a bridge that needs
| support in more than 30 or so feet of water_
|
| You put in sheet piling 50 meters upstream, and you fill
| the box with rocks. That's state of the art practice,
| nowadays, but that bridge was 50 years old.
| nwiswell wrote:
| The sheet piling didn't need to be 50 years old.
|
| In 1977 (and in 1972, when construction began), vessels
| of this size did not exist, and certainly were not
| allowed in the harbor[1]. But over time, they were given
| authorization, despite the fact that they could collapse
| the unprotected bridge like a load of toothpicks.
|
| The real crime here is that there was no retrofit to
| protect the pylons. It was almost certainly considered
| and rejected due to cost.
|
| [1]: https://logisticselearning.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/06/Co...
|
| The ship in question here was 10K TEU.
| jameshart wrote:
| According to the marine traffic track shown in the
| YouTube analysis above, the ship looks to have been
| heading through the channel, but then nosed in right
| under the bridge. Would have sailed right past upstream
| dolphins, and rammed the pylon from the inside anyway.
| kazinator wrote:
| I think the only reasonable goal would be to design the
| bridge to minimize damage to it, so that one damaged
| section doesn't bring down others.
|
| Building a bridge to actually stop the ship is not only
| infeasible, but it would likely kill (more) people onboard.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| the modern practice is layers of defense; in addition to
| building a bridge that doesn't fail at a single point of
| failure, you also generally design what's around a bridge
| pier to stop or at least slow down the ship (by, say,
| running aground onto a bed of rocks around a pier)
| PeterCorless wrote:
| For a bridge such defenses are called dolphins.
|
| "A notable example of dolphins used to protect a bridge
| is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the mouth of Tampa
| Bay. In 1980, the MV Summit Venture hit a pier on one of
| the bridge's two, two-lane spans causing a 1,200-foot
| (370 m) section of the bridge to fall into the water,
| resulting in 35 deaths. When a replacement span was
| designed, a top priority was to prevent ships from
| colliding with the new bridge..."
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
|
| The MV Summit Venture was a 33,900 deadweight tonnage
| ship. MV Dali was a gross tonnage of 95,128. Nearly 3x as
| large. It's questionable whether dolphins would have
| totally prevented such a tragedy.
|
| Yet similarly, expect dolphins to be brought up as a key
| component of resiliency for any designed replacement
| bridge.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| That's _also_ a thing.
|
| But note how the main bridge piers are on giant islands
| much larger than the pier itself: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)#/media/Fil...
|
| If you _really_ want to make it unblockable you build a
| bridge+tunnel.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge%E2%80%93tunnel
| js2 wrote:
| The CBBT is downstream of the bridge which collapsed.
| I've driven it many times.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge-
| Tunnel
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not the impact, it's the fact that it just keeps
| pushing. Movies commonly use slow motion and time extension
| via editing for destruction scenes because (as we've just
| seen) real time doesn't always look impressive to the
| untrained eye.
|
| Also, there's a lot of mass concentrated in that ship. It's
| the equivalent of hitting a window with a sledgehammer. Small
| recreational vessels could probably crash into those pylons
| all day long.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _I don 't know what I was expecting, the bridge just looked
| extremely fragile, makes me wonder what other bridges are at
| risk of an event like this._
|
| The bridge style in question
|
| > _Conversely, continuous truss bridges rely on rigid truss
| connections throughout the structure for stability. Severing
| a continuous truss mid-span endangers the structure. However,
| continuous truss bridges do not experience the tipping forces
| that a cantilever bridge must resist because the main span of
| a continuous truss bridge is supported at both ends._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_truss_bridge
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Bal
| t...
|
| So taking out one end basically takes out the whole thing.
|
| I would not be surprised that when they build the
| replacement, it will be a design where the individual
| components are more self-resilient, like:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-stayed_bridge
|
| The engineering best practices, budgets, and needs may have
| been different fifty years ago. Cargo ships were also a lot
| smaller fifty years ago.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| cable stays are also generally more popular these days
| because of the differences in material. All other things
| being equal, concrete is generally a lot cheaper than a
| steel truss bridge these days
| londons_explore wrote:
| If they play the cards very carefully, they can pull out
| and recycle all the steel of the old bridge, and use that
| to pay for a new (cheaper) concrete bridge.
| moritonal wrote:
| When you play about with game engines long enough, you start
| to realise that momentum is the key metric to track rather
| than speed. Especially in water magnitude can be very
| deceiving but to give some quick math, this vessel had a
| momentum at impact of about 154,000,000kg[?]m/s. For a car to
| have equivalent momentum it'd have hit the bridge at 156,580
| mph. Humans are just less adept at appreciating mass vs
| velocity.
| amluto wrote:
| Energy matters, too. That hypothetical car has the order of
| 1 kiloton of TNT of kinetic energy. The resulting blast
| would have been large.
|
| (This is about the estimated yield of the Beirut
| explosion.)
|
| I would rather get hit by a slow moving object than a fast
| one with equal momentum.
| ithkuil wrote:
| If you're moored on the ground you'd be torn apart in
| both cases
| kazinator wrote:
| Probably most of them. A structure like that not designed to
| bear vertical loads, not lateral ones, other than high winds.
|
| The knee is like this too. It lets you stand, run and jump
| just fine, but you can knock down an opponent with a
| relatively mild lateral impact to the knee.
|
| Much more of the bridge collapsed than you might think,
| though, far from the impact.
| major505 wrote:
| Bridges are design to withstand a very predictable type and
| direction of force. It can withstand the lateral wind, but
| imagine how much force a fully loaded cargo ship can put into
| it. Once one segment gone the rest is history, because makes
| the who construction imbalanced.
| mlrtime wrote:
| F = MA
|
| A looks like 'barely a bump' M is what got the bridge.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I remember when I was a kid, I left a bus, and the bus
| started moving, and I, not being intimidated by the bus
| moving very slowly (somewhere between 5 and 10 km/h), didn't
| move a safe distance away from the bus. I think the bus, due
| to the nature of its maneuverability, had its tail moving not
| in parallel to me but slightly towards me - so when it has
| "touched" (hit?) me, even though I thought it was just
| sliding in parallel, the force was so strong I made a full
| 360deg turn - and I was a tall and chubby boy.
|
| I ended up with no injury, not even a bruise as far as I can
| remember (who would count bruises as a kid), but definitely
| with an intuition to respect mass.
| OJFord wrote:
| Apparently (this is just via someone on Reddit who supposedly
| heard/read it somewhere) the ship mayday'd on losing power
| hoping the bridge could be cleared.
|
| But why not (or did it?) also just blast its horn repeatedly,
| drawing attention so people on or near the bridge would notice
| it and realise something was wrong and perhaps even where it
| was headed?
|
| I'm sure it's not allowed generally and not the protocol and
| whatever ... But it does seem like a common sense & do whatever
| you can sort of situation to me?
| themerone wrote:
| Why would a driver think a ship's horn was signaling them?
| OJFord wrote:
| AIUI most souls on the bridge were construction workers
| filling potholes, not drivers. But either way I'd have
| thought a certain amount of horn blowing would catch my
| attention just for being out of the ordinary, even though
| it's also not ordinary for ships to (need to) signal me.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Ya the people on the bridge would have less than 4
| minutes to figure out the ship is crashing then to clear
| 2500 feet of bridge. When you're working with
| construction equipment you'd probably not notice till you
| had seconds left.
| OJFord wrote:
| 4 minutes is a lot longer to save your life than nothing?
| And do you really think that's the answer, that was the
| calculation on the ship - well they only have 4 minutes
| until we hit anyway, so there's nothing they can do, not
| worth it?
|
| I wasn't criticising anyone, I was 1) asking if that
| happened; 2) asking why it might not have.
|
| I think the answer is much more likely that the loss of
| power disabled the horn (as others have suggested) than
| that the crew thought it wasn't worthwhile because there
| was insufficient time for anyone on the bridge to fare
| any better anyway!
| munificent wrote:
| _> But why not (or did it?) also just blast its horn
| repeatedly, _
|
| Hard to blow your electrically driven horn when you've lost
| power.
| OJFord wrote:
| I suppose I assumed it was compressed air, that once you
| had a 'full' (at pressure) tank, you could do a certain
| amount of blowing even without power. But fair point, I
| don't really know how they work, and if they are actively
| electric I certainly didn't know that and obviously that
| wouldn't have worked and so there's the answer.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I assumed it was compressed air, that once you had a
| 'full' (at pressure) tank_
|
| Even so, it probably still requires electricity to
| activate the solenoids to open the valves or whatever.
| I'm speculating since I don't know how large boat horns
| work, but I wouldn't be surprised if they require power.
| OJFord wrote:
| Oh good point.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Blasting the horn repeatedly is not a standard signal, but
| there are standard signals which might apply to a situation
| like this, for example "vessel not under command", "collision
| imminent", "vessel reversing", etc.
| mcv wrote:
| Don't expect car drivers on the bridge to understand ship
| signals, though.
|
| Also, how does the driver know what to do? Stopping on the
| bridge, even well before the point where the ship hit, was
| clearly the wrong choice. Authorities need to stop new cars
| from entering the bridge while those on it leave, but that
| takes more than a handful of seconds to arrange. Unless
| there are traffic lights, perhaps.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Yes, there's no reason for a ship to attempt to signal
| drivers on a bridge, nor is there any way for them to do
| so. Signals are for communicating to other ships.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Because horn blasts are very specifically meant to
| communicate something to other ships. Once you're in "just
| blast it" mode you're seconds from disaster. I recognize the
| nobility of your suggestion, but I don't think it could have
| saved more than couple lives at most, probably none.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well yeah, they were only minutes away at the point they
| lost power, there was very little time to do anything at
| all, that's why I asked. Personally I can't really imagine
| anyone holding it against them for using the 'signal that's
| for other ships' 'incorrectly' or 'against protocol' in
| such a situation. I think the comments speculating that the
| horn is either purely or in some way (e.g. solenoid)
| dependent on electricity is more likely the answer. I think
| a reasonable human in that situation who knows what's going
| on (that's why I mentioned that they apparently were able
| to radio/however they mayday that there's an issue) is
| going to do whatever they can, including use the horn
| wrong.
| rightbyte wrote:
| There is a proper signal. You are supposed to give _at
| least_ five short signals if you think there is an
| impeding collision.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > But why not (or did it?) also just blast its horn
| repeatedly,
|
| It's hard for people on the bridge to understand what that
| means. The more it blasts the horn, the more likely people to
| turn around, stop and maybe get their phones out to take a
| video what strange thing this ship is doing. By the time they
| realize the impact is imminent, it's too late, unless they
| take a helicopter ride.
| wiml wrote:
| There are specific horn signals (one prolonged, or seven-
| short-one-prolonged, are what I'd guess would be appropriate
| here), and COLREGS do explicitly say that you can use
| whatever you need to get attention in an emergency as long as
| it's not confusable with some official signal. But as other
| commenters have noted it wouldn't have been specific enough
| to get the workers etc to clear the bridge before the impact.
| bmitc wrote:
| That timeline implies that there was only four minutes to
| respond. Is that correct? Where was the ship going? Does it
| travel under this bridge on its own power rather than a tug
| boat?
|
| What I am wondering is: why couldn't the bridge have been
| blocked off preventing casualties? It seems like more than just
| the boat and operators' failing if there's no time or secondary
| precautions if such failures occur.
|
| I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons like
| they have in front of buildings to stop cars and trucks.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent
| their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the
| traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through.
|
| Most (all?) of the people on the bridge were contractors
| repairing potholes.
|
| _> I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons
| like they have in front of buildings to stop cars and
| trucks._
|
| They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them.
| bmitc wrote:
| > It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent
| their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the
| traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through.
|
| This video makes that a little hard to believe:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk. Looks like
| traffic was crossing up until the last second.
|
| Will have to do some more reading as it's very confusing
| what the ship was doing and what it should have been doing
| under normal circumstances. In the video, it almost looks
| like it was steered directly into the bridge. Very
| confusing.
|
| > They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them.
|
| Thanks for that!
| dyno12345 wrote:
| yea if you watch the longer video they stopped traffic
| only a few seconds before the impact. incredibly lucky.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Relevant discussion on whether Titanic also tried to do a full
| reverse and, if true, if this was the right decision:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1abvwqt/if_the_tit...
| araes wrote:
| Current personal suspicion after watching your linked video
| (excellent discussion by the wgowshipping author) is:
|
| Catastrophic engine failure (1:24) causing wide scale power
| loss.
|
| No rudder control, rudder drift, and ship alignment drift
| (1:24-1:25:30)
|
| Power restored and ship reengages prop with bad ship/ruddder
| alignment (1:25). However, ship is now pushing itself into a
| further bad turn. Pilot likely stomps the brakes realizing
| misalignment. Obviously 2-3 minutes is not enough to stop
| 100,000 tons at 8.5 kts, since it only got to 7.5 kts before
| crashing. Power loss may have caused total rudder loss.
|
| Similar to a car that hits ice, wheels have arbitrary alignment
| when they reengage road, when power starts being delivered
| again, car swerves towards concrete barrier even with brakes.
| Driver with limited crash experience is mostly just panicking
| and stomping.
|
| How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience
| with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses
| where seconds matter?
|
| Edit: Also, economic disaster for Baltimore.
|
| > (Wiki) The Port of Baltimore generates $3 billion in annual
| wages and salary, as well as supporting 14,630 direct jobs and
| 108,000 jobs connected to port work. In 2014, the port
| generated more than $300 million in taxes. 1st in automobiles,
| light trucks, farm and construction machinery, imported forest
| products, aluminum, and sugar. 2nd in coal exports.
|
| Edit2: Bloomberg has an economic look including info on autos.
| ~$500 million in March 2024 so far. Honda, Mercedes, Subaru
| likely worst hit.
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJmvXiCWkAAgDcE?format=png&name=...
|
| 3,600 commercial trucks / day. Hazardous material transport has
| a 30 mile detour. Baltimore had $350 million of insurance.
| However, Brent Spence Bridge is noted for cost comparison at
| $3.6 billion and 1/5 the length.
|
| Baltimore StreamTime also has live view with ongoing
| discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg
| pseingatl wrote:
| Panama Canal pilots.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I'm not sure what configuration of props a ship like this
| has, but in my experience with a 40ft sailboat with a single
| propeller you have absolutely no rudder authority while
| reversing. I've read that some large ships also are direct
| drive--there's no transmission between the engine and the
| propeller, so "reversing" (if it's even possible) entails
| shutting down the engine and restarting it in reverse. This
| can be done with a two stroke engine. And yes, 8.5kt is not
| slow when you're displacing 100k tons, no correction will
| happen quickly.
| culebron21 wrote:
| This reminded me of an old physics book I read where author
| claimed that Titanic also lost rudder control and yawed
| because of full reverse.
| supportengineer wrote:
| No variable-pitch propeller?
| wlll wrote:
| > in my experience with a 40ft sailboat with a single
| propeller you have absolutely no rudder authority while
| reversing.
|
| In general it depends on the rudders and the boat.
|
| Longer keeled boats don't respond well in reverse at all
| but more modern boats (like mine, 1990) will do better but
| will still need some way to have steerage. I can certainly
| manouver around the marina in reverse, it's just harder
| than forwards and I need to be going a bit faster to get
| the control.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Long keeled boats don't respond well going forward
| either, right? Compared to flater boats with a modern
| keel.
| wlll wrote:
| All I really know about long keels is from what people
| have said. They tend to track well and don't tend to make
| as much leeway, but perhaps at the expense of speed due
| to the wetted area, and they are hard to steer backwards.
| Not being particularly manouverable forwards isn't really
| an issue if you're spending several hours going mostly in
| a straight line.
|
| Modern flat boats (like the 2017 Dufour I learned on) are
| highly manouverable at slow speed, we practiced spinning
| the boat on the spot by using prop wash over the rudder
| forwards then ticking over in reverse. Could turn the
| boat in not much more space than the boat length, but may
| not track as well, may slam more, and make more leeway.
| mcv wrote:
| Going backwards in the marina I often steer on the engine
| rather than the rudder (though I keep the rudder aligned
| with the engine of course). Obviously that's in a tiny
| sailing boat with an external engine, but I thought large
| ships also often have a steerable front propeller to
| assist with steering and mooring. Although maybe these
| very large ships use tugboats for that.
| paddy_m wrote:
| an outboard? that is very very different because you
| control the direction of thrust also.
| wlll wrote:
| My boat has an inboard diesel so no ability to direct the
| prop. It does have a bow thruster, but it's only really
| used at slow speed, usually right at the point of docking
| and undocking in tight spaces, once you get the boat
| moving in forward or reverse you don't need it.
|
| I have no idea about container ship sized boats, though
| I'd imagine a bow thruster of steerable prop might not be
| practical at that scale.
| nemanja wrote:
| Well if you keep rudder aligned with the engine (i.e.
| parallel) you are really using both, not just the engine.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > my experience with a 40ft sailboat with a single
| propeller you have absolutely no rudder authority while
| reversing.
|
| I have to protest here. Reversing and using the rudder on a
| 40ft boat works perfectly fine. I've done it on multiple
| sailing boats. You need to hold tight so that the rudder
| wont slap you if using a stick.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| If you have enough way on to combat the prop walk, yes.
| But in a situation like backing down trying to come to a
| stop (at least in my boat, a 1962 Block Island 40)
| there's a very long "dead time" while transitioning from
| slowly moving forward to slowly moving in reverse where
| the rudder just doesn't do anything. The way I maneuver
| in these situations is to do all my heading corrections
| in forward gear, where prop wash over the rudder gives it
| authority. So it's a game of shots of reverse,
| corrections, rinse, repeat.
|
| EDIT: also planning ahead is important, because if I do
| it right the prop walk in reverse can be used
| advantageously.
|
| Also, with the BI-40's barn door rudder it'll slap you
| through the wheel if you're not careful. Almost broke my
| leg that way, not a lesson to forget.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Nice boat! Ye it does not look too nimble in harbours.
| Somewhere over 40ft with "light" boats is where I feel
| you get into the "you got one chance" harbour manouvers
| (unless there is some front sideways motor cheating).
|
| It happens something that I really can't explain, but I
| guess it is weight related. Or maybe area. Dunno.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Yeah it's right around 20000lb displacement, so momentum
| is a real thing ;). The fiberglass is over 2" thick at
| the keel tapering to a mere 1" at the hull to deck joint.
| Decks are solid glass as well. At the time it was a
| newfangled material and they were scared of it so they
| used a lot.
|
| Also, the bow seems to catch the wind really hard so you
| can get spun around if it's blowing and you head off the
| wind too much without enough way on. Leave room, plan
| ahead, have a backup plan, etc.
| jameshart wrote:
| Isn't there a pretty big difference in how much rudder
| authority you get between just making way astern, and
| having the engine in full reverse while still traveling
| forwards at seven knots?
| efitz wrote:
| It's complicated.
|
| The rudder is a wing, it's just vertically oriented and
| underwater.
|
| The rudder is capable of stalling, just like any wing.
| The rudder only produces lift related to the flow of
| water over the rudder. The lift produced by the rudder is
| what is experienced as turning force. The tiller or wheel
| changes the angle of attack.
|
| I used to helm a racing sailboat with a high aspect (long
| & narrow) rudder. It could provide a lot of turning force
| but stalled easily. It didn't work as well under power as
| it did under sail; I suspect this was due to the
| turbulent flow off of the propeller, which was forward of
| the rudder.
|
| On the Dali, the rudder should have been providing some
| turning force due to the 7+ knot flow of water over the
| rudder. Full reverse propeller might have impacted that;
| I can't comment because I've never helmed a ship that
| large.
|
| Additionally, a single-propeller vessel like the Dali,
| will have "prop walk" - asymmetric thrust that pushes the
| stern of the craft one way or the other while the
| propeller is rotating.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I'm only a minimally experienced (coastal cruising)
| sailor so there's plenty of things I don't know, but this
| is the first time I've heard the rudder as a wing
| (lifting surface) rather than as a neutral control
| surface.
|
| It sort of makes high-level sense that a lifting bias
| could in theory work as a counteraction to propwalk. But
| the terminology is a bit confusing because aerodynamic
| lift is a byproduct of air being a compressible medium,
| whereas water is not. Maybe lift means something
| different when we're talking about water?
|
| At any rate in scenarios where the prop is not engaged,
| which in a sailboat is most of them, I don't think I've
| ever noticed a tendency for heading to track
| predominantly one way or the other, in circumstances
| where it seems that would be very pronounced and hard to
| miss, like extended running downwind. Is the lifting body
| rudder mainly a performance boat thing? Or perhaps am I
| just so used to trimming this bias out that I don't
| recognize where it's coming from?
| areyousure wrote:
| > But the terminology is a bit confusing because
| aerodynamic lift is a byproduct of air being a
| compressible medium, whereas water is not. Maybe lift
| means something different when we're talking about water?
|
| A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofoil is a wing that
| produces lift in water.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Since they were still moving forward while gunning it in
| reverse the rudder would still operate normally. They
| generally have bow thrusters too. I have no idea whether
| they could have been operational with the broader
| power/engine failures but if they were available I'm sure
| they were being used as well.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The question is what is the velocity of the water moving
| over the rudder? If forward velocity and the current due
| to a reversing prop cancel, then the rudder can't do
| anything.
| esaym wrote:
| >entails shutting down the engine and restarting it in
| reverse. This can be done with a two stroke engine.
|
| Funny, I was starting a 2 stroke chainsaw a couple of years
| ago. I yanked the cord, it kicked back, pulling my arm back
| down but the saw started up and ran anyway. But it would
| not cut at all. I killed it and restarted it and noticed
| the chain going the other (right) way and it was now
| cutting fine. It has started in reverse the first time!
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I docked in reverse multiple times, same as parking a car
| in reverse. Just need water flowing along the rudder (from
| motion, not prop wash), but otherwise it's a great way to
| turn into tight spaces. Gotta be careful about prop walk,
| which will dominate the controllability until some reverse
| speed is established. So until you've decelerated to 0 and
| re-accelerated in reverse, you don't have much control
| beyond prop walk.
| paddy_m wrote:
| On ships like this the propulsion is separate from the
| steering. There is a separate rudder that is close to, but
| not attached to the prop and propshaft. The propshaft is
| fixed. The rudder doesn't just "restart in a random position"
| it would remain in the previous position unless there was a
| physical piece that broke in the rudder gear.
|
| The fact that ship was able to reverse hard ( as evidenced by
| the slowdown), indicates to me that the prop was most likely
| still attached to the propshaft and hadn't flown off to
| mangle the rudder.
|
| We still don't know exactly what happened on board, but it is
| interesting to work through possible scenarios.
|
| Pilots certainly have experience with ship handling of
| 100,000 ton ships, that's their job. Pilots coordinate the
| moves of multiple tugs to assist with docking regularly.
| thekid314 wrote:
| Was there a harbor pilot on board, or the normal ship
| pilot?
|
| Were there tug boats helping with the exit?
|
| I have often felt that the harbor protocols were overkill,
| but this is one of the times they could have helped.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| All pilots are "harbor pilots". Crew members who control
| the ship outside of port are just called crew members
| (captain, first mate, 2nd Officer, that kind of thing),
| never pilot.
| delichon wrote:
| There used to be! See William Adams, "the pilot of Miura"
| or "Miura Anjin", inspiration for John Blackthorne in
| James Clavell's Shogun.
| reaperman wrote:
| I don't know Japanese and havent studied this so
| hopefully someone can correct me as well. But I dont
| think it would be right to translate this to the modern
| meaning of a ship pilot. It more loosely translated to
| "navigator".
|
| There are some seemingly good details here[0].
|
| > _In Early Modern Japanese there was a word An Zhen
| anjin, literally "searching needle," which referred to
| the process of using a compass. At the time, this was the
| main way in which ships were navigated and so, by
| extension, the word was applied not just to ship
| navigation, but also to ship navigators_
|
| It goes into more detail about things as well but that is
| the part that stuck out to me the most.
|
| 0: http://japanthis.com/2013/06/20/what-does-anjincho-
| mean/
| pixl97 wrote:
| Once the ship is under way I don't think the tugs hang
| around. They are just for the push away from the dock and
| initial turns.
| Amezarak wrote:
| It's very typical for pilots to be required for all
| entrance and egress from harbors, much more than the
| initial pushaway and turning but for quite a long
| distance through the channel.
| mc32 wrote:
| The incident has some similarities ti the Cosco-Busan. It
| hit the base of the bridge piers and bounced off. The
| bridge wasn't damaged.
|
| That one was due to pilot error. The point is the pilot
| was still onboard but he was impaired by medication, the
| captain and mates kind of engaged in dereliction of
| duties contributing to the accident.
|
| Obviously it'll be a while before we know what happened
| in Baltimore.
| kapilvt wrote:
| a Baltimore local harbor pilot was onboard from what I've
| read.
| refulgentis wrote:
| 2x harbor pilots.
|
| No tugs.
|
| Harbor protocol was in effect.
| paddy_m wrote:
| There were tugs two tugs helping depart the dock and
| turn, until about 43 seconds in the video. 5:08 AM real
| time
| efitz wrote:
| The video referenced in the parent post stated that the
| two tugs assisting with undocking had already disengaged
| (0:54).
|
| AP News [1] is reporting that harbor pilots were on-board
| and were nominally in control of the ship at the time of
| the accident.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-
| collapse-53169b3...
|
| Update: added timestamp, link
| reactordev wrote:
| At this point in the journey, they were cleared of the
| docks but not the channel. There wouldn't be a docking
| pilot on board nor would there be any tugs. It was cleared
| and under it's own propulsion until it wasn't.
|
| My sailors guess from the footage and the reports is diesel
| generator failure(s) resulting in loss of power,
| restoration of power, then loss of power again. Bypassing
| the diesel generator (which provides power to hydraulics
| too) and manually throwing the engines in reverse. The
| billow of black smoke. This could have possibly burned out
| an engine, blowing the camshaft or propshaft or
| transmission.
|
| The reverse was too late as the ship was already heading
| for the bridge pylon. Even at full reverse, you couldn't
| slow it down fast enough. Tragic.
| twic wrote:
| The ship's managers (which I believe means the company
| which chartered it from its owners, and were operating
| it) say there were two pilots on board:
|
| https://www.synergymarinegroup.com/dali-imo-9697428/
| reactordev wrote:
| Well then there were two pilots aboard to see it into the
| Chesapeake...
|
| Still, a diesel gen malfunction would render them useless
| unless one of them was a diesel mechanic as well (we
| sailors often have multiple credentials).
| elihu wrote:
| Do big container ships like this typically just have a
| standard propeller/rudder without some kind of directional
| thruster to assist in maneuvering?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voith_Schneider_Propeller
| lotu wrote:
| > How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience
| with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses
| where seconds matter?
|
| I would expect anyone piloting such a ship in a harbor/under
| bridges. We requite airline pilots to train for many unlikely
| plane failures because the alternative is letting planes
| crash that we could have saved with better training.
| animex wrote:
| You can train for it, then how many years into your career
| you actually experience such a scenario are you likely to
| act instinctually and recover. The best solution would be
| to improve autopilot assist as it will never forget how to
| correct (if possible).
| sierrah wrote:
| Lol you're right, controlling a ship with human inputs is
| so hard that is was the inspiration for a Russian
| shipmaster to create PID control
| londons_explore wrote:
| But I believe no big ships use any kind of autopilot
| while near shore. they only use it in the middle of the
| ocean.
| verandaguy wrote:
| If it's anything like airline pilot training, there's
| periodic retraining and evaluation to make sure pilots
| have the right reactions in case of an emergency.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Nope. The military, aerospace, and medical industries
| have all refused full automation in life-or-death
| situations with cause.
| aidos wrote:
| I've done some sailing but have no real authority when it
| comes to vessels like these.
|
| Friends of mine are pilots on the Thames (London) and I
| seem to recall one of them telling me it was over 10
| years training before you could bring a big boat in.
| Pretty fascinating really - they figure out all the tides
| and weather and plan the route. On the day they board
| along with a sensor system that sits in the bridge and
| gives the position to a high level of accuracy.
| hammock wrote:
| >How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience
| with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses
| where seconds matter?
|
| I would hope, given the economic and humanitarian
| consequences of a crash, that we have simulators for this
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| We have miniature physical simulators for it with reduced
| scale ships & environments.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jplrbxI5GN8
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Catastrophic engine failure doesn't sound like a problem
| that's resolvable in 60 seconds.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience
| with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses
| where seconds matter?
|
| I think you are missing the point.
|
| Clearly I am speculating, but I don't think any more
| experience would have helped in this event.
|
| Why ? I think what happened today was almost entirely down to
| not being able to fight the basic Laws of Physics.
|
| Its a well known fact that enormous ships take an equally
| enormous amount of time and distance to reflect the actions
| of the captain. You make an input and you see the result a
| bunch of time and distance later.
|
| Time and distance were, sadly, not on the captain's side
| today. Physics took care of the rest.
| joelshep wrote:
| To continue the speculation ... as a ship that size is slow
| to turn or halt, that seems to suggest that even if the
| ship hadn't suffered a power failure then it would have
| passed quite close to the bridge pier anyway. Was that
| expected?
| efitz wrote:
| Yes, it was expected. Ports have "channels", essentially
| traffic lanes. Until the first power failure, the Dali
| was in the proper lane and would not have collided with
| anything if she had remained there.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I hope the next POTUS makes good on Biden's promises because
| Baltimore and Maryland will need federal assistance since
| they can't afford such a burden.
|
| And I assume there will lawsuits to recover costs as this
| caused economic damage and risk to life (8 people unaccounted
| for at current time).
| xp84 wrote:
| I'm kind of confused how a President can promise something
| like that. He doesn't have any power to appropriate money,
| and given his party's lack of control of Congress, I'd
| argue he can't promise anything.
|
| Not to mention that one can scarcely find a "bluer" area
| than Baltimore -- I would assume that the most proudly
| right-wing politicians would be more than happy to let
| Baltimore suffer to score points with their polarized
| supporters. I hope it doesn't come to that, but they tried
| to block Hurricane Sandy relief, despite every hurricane in
| the South being an automatic 'non-partisan' emergency.
| chx wrote:
| > It's my intention that the federal government will pay
| for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge and I
| expect the Congress to support my effort
|
| This is what he said. I would expect Congress to play
| along too -- just how unpopular would it be to abandon
| Baltimore??
| depereo wrote:
| Republican side probably doesn't care; Maryland voted 65%
| for a democratic party president.
| not2b wrote:
| He'll need to get Congress to pass an appropriation, yes,
| this is his way of putting pressure on them to do it. I
| think that there are emergency funds already appropriated
| that he can immediately tap, but they would fall way
| short of the cost needed to build a new bridge. The
| damage here doesn't just affect Baltimore, the national
| economy is affected.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| Industry has the power here.
| dboreham wrote:
| This seems like a system architecture error. Boats do weird
| shit sometimes and so bridges need to be deigned to not fall
| down when a boat crashes into them. Requiring a huge boat to
| be steered to meter resolution when clearly that's not always
| going to happen is top shelf stupidity. Up there with backup
| generators in the basement below the water table.
| FredFS456 wrote:
| My civ engineer friend says that bridges are supposed to
| have barriers in front of their pylons for this particular
| reason - in the event of a collision, the barrier would be
| destroyed but not the pylon.
| reaperman wrote:
| I can't find any bridges which have a barrier that can
| protect against a fully loaded container ship. I have
| seen plenty of barriers which would protect against
| personal watercraft and smaller working ships like
| smaller tugs/coast guard ships/shrimping boats, etc.
|
| But a loaded container ship at 8 knots is not going to be
| stopped by anything remotely feasible.
|
| Container ships weigh between 50,000 and 220,000 tons. A
| US aircraft carrier weighs 100,000 tons.
| kortilla wrote:
| Top shelf stupidity is thinking a container ship's momentum
| can be stopped by normal barriers.
| sackbut wrote:
| I've see pictures of the barriers before the accident and
| they were there, but they looked like they were tailored
| to 70s era ships not the container laden ships of today
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Baltimore had $350 million of insurance.
|
| Wouldn't the ship's insurance be the one paying here?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Baltimore's insurance will probably sue the ship's
| insurance if I had to guess.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| I'm once again impressed that subject matter experts are out
| there on every topic, and they are often capable of quickly and
| accurately disseminating information about an event _far_
| better than the local news.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Do you have recommendations/other channels with experts like
| this?
| epcoa wrote:
| > event far better than the local news.
|
| That's such a ludicrously low bar that I'm not even sure this
| would qualify as a compliment to these alternative producers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| One might expect that local news are well connected with
| those who actually did construction, planning and whatnot
| of such projects, or emergency responders, or disaster
| mitigation, or people specialized in local geology /
| hydrology to show up challenges...
|
| The sad truth is that "local" news more often than not
| barely has any local people any more, a lot of content is
| directly ripped off from others (especially fire dep't or
| police reports, with the added problem that no one
| challenges the copaganda), or not local at all but
| produced/sourced by central agencies, or theoretically
| "local" reporters have such large areas to cover that they
| can't reasonably build relationships with experts.
| paddy_m wrote:
| The local sailor/professional mariner bar in Newport will be
| interesting tonight!
| boringg wrote:
| How much of this is falls on the protocols of the shipping
| company? I.e. the same shipping companies that gouged the
| planet during covid - did they strip away safety protocols in
| order for profits/expediency?
|
| Is this similar to Boeing for the shipping world? I realize it
| is early to come to any conclusions.
|
| The question of this being a rare one off vs container
| companies deprioritizing safety protocols is what I am
| interested. The power failures make me go down this logic of
| thought.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Boeing makes and sells planes, they don't fly people.
|
| Maersk/ZIM rent container ships from another company who
| makes them and drive them around.
|
| These are completely different companies. A more correct
| comparison would be something like Jetblue or American
| Airlines.
|
| But I seriously doubt there is the result of some kind of
| profit hungry CEO. However I cannot with 100% say it's not
| until we find more details. But I feel confident enough to
| avoid the tin foil hat.
| baxtr wrote:
| Can anyone say if there is the slightest possibility that this
| was caused by an Cyber attack?
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| As an inland armchair-captain, I want to admonish that
| tugboats should probably always be stationed around bridges
| to intercept such off-course mariners.
| Arrath wrote:
| It seems much more reasonable to only disengage the
| tugboats that were already helping the container ship get
| under way once it clears navigation hazards like the
| bridge, instead of keeping 24/7 quick-response tugboats at
| the bridge that try to intercept an out of control ship in
| a bare few minutes.
| efitz wrote:
| Moving large boats across water is slow. The Francis
| Scott Key bridge was 8600 feet long, or 1.4 nautical
| miles. AFAICT there were just over 4 minutes from the
| time that the first power outage started until the ship
| struck the piling.
|
| A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4
| minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at
| the very best (running start in correct direction).
|
| So let's say that there would have been 4 minutes for a
| tugboat to (1) become aware of the problem, (2) travel to
| the location of the ship, (3) figure out what it needs to
| do, (4) maneuver into position [keeping in mind it might
| need to move to the other side of a 900' ship moving 8
| knots] and (5) move the ship. And this assumes that the
| tugboat was idle in the first place.
|
| There just would not have been enough time to do anything
| meaningful if the tug wasn't already right at the ship,
| on the correct side.
| Arrath wrote:
| Thank you for putting it into numbers!
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| I would be _very_ interested in knowing who was piloting the
| ship. And I hope they are held criminally accountable for their
| actions.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The speculation on hacker news vs reality is interesting to note.
| Don't guess before the facts are out.
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/news/major-baltimore-bridge-c...
|
| > The container shipper that caused the collapse of a major
| bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday morning issued a Mayday call
| indicating that it had lost power shortly before it struck the
| bridge's piling, allowing state officials to close the bridge to
| traffic in a move that likely saved lives, Baltimore mayor
| Brandon Scott said at a press conference held as search-and-
| rescue efforts continued.
|
| Yes, they have traffic control on the bridge, and they stopped
| traffic when they got the mayday.
| robotnikman wrote:
| >a Mass Casualty Incident has been Declared with over a Dozen
| Cars and many Individuals said to be in the Water.
|
| This is literally like out of a nightmare I sometimes have,
| falling off of a bridge in my car into the water...
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| I have this one too. I'm always on a bridge that somehow has a
| big on/off ramp over the water and fall in off the ramp.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| The Association of Maryland (boat) Pilots literally has a header
| image of a harbor pilot tug escorting a cargo ship to the Key
| Bridge...
|
| https://www.mdpilots.com/
|
| Wonder where they were.
| reliablereason wrote:
| On the bridge of the ship one would imagine.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Looks like they were on the ship, should there also be a tug
| when piloting these ships?
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13239953/Singaporea...
|
| >The cargo ship that smashed into the Scott Key Bridge in
| Baltimore overnight was piloted by a specialized crew trained
| to avoid obstacles at ports, it has been revealed.
|
| >The ship, a 948-foot-long DALI operated by Singaporean company
| Synergy Group, collided with the 1.2-mile bridge shortly after
| 1.26am as it left port.
|
| >Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said on
| Tuesday morning it appears none of the 22 crewmembers were
| injured, as he revealed it was being steered by the specialist
| pilots.
|
| >'Pilots move ships in and out of the Port of Baltimore,' he
| said at a press conference, noting that the specialist pilots
| depart the ships as soon as they are in open water.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| More details froem WaPo...
|
| >The ship was towed into the river initially, but the tugboats
| did not accompany the ship all the way to the bridge, said John
| Konrad, a retired ship captain who runs the gCaptain maritime
| news website and co-authored a book on the Deepwater Horizon
| oil spill.
|
| >"The safe thing to do is keep the tugs," Konrad said. "Moving
| forward, I think that's going to happen. The Coast Guard is
| going to say you've got to keep the tugs tied up until you pass
| the bridge."
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Here is real time playback of the incident, you can see both
| tugs leave the ship and do not accompany it past the bridge.
| You can see one of the tugs turn and head back to the ship
| before the collision...
|
| https://twitter.com/MarineTraffic/status/1772545501612671284
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Grady's licking his lips right now
| sybercecurity wrote:
| For those who want to hear up to date news, some local sites are:
|
| WBAL https://wbal.com/ WTOP https://wtop.com/
|
| Two local news radio stations. Fans of The Wire series may have
| heard WBAL in the background in some of the scenes, it's a
| Baltimore institution since everyone wants to get traffic
| updates.
| HaZeust wrote:
| TRAFFIC AND WEATHER ON THE 8's AND WHEN IT BREAKS!
|
| WBAL and WTOP has been a great service to cover the great
| disarray of Baltimore over the last decade.
| oliv__ wrote:
| I hope they rebuild it in a similar design. It was beautiful!
| slackfan wrote:
| What do you do with a drunken sailor, What do you do with a
| drunken sailor, What do you do with a drunken sailor, Early in
| the morning?
| lom wrote:
| How is the thread only an hour old but comments 9?
| charonn0 wrote:
| Mods probably merged multiple posts.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Amazing how many people are shocked that the bridge collapsed
| like that. That was one huge ship! Bridges are in a carefully
| balanced state of tension and compression, if anything as
| significant as a large container ship upsets that, I'd be shocked
| if it survived.
| koliber wrote:
| There was a video the other week on Reddit where a cargo ship
| devastated a few loading cranes in a port in Turkey. Now this.
|
| How often do cargo ships run into infrastructure? Is this just a
| coincidence that it happened twice in a few weeks?
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Yes it's a coincidence.
| squigz wrote:
| What else do you think it might be?
| edward28 wrote:
| Clearly one incompetent captain keeps getting reassigned
| across the world.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Cargo ships have done serious damage to infrastructure in the
| last few years. The giant ship stuck in the Suez was just an
| example - giant ships have gotten stuck in the Chesapeake Bay,
| Rotterdam and elsewhere.
|
| The same week for major disasters would be a coincidence but
| I'd guess minor stuff is happening constantly.
|
| The main thing is that shipping companies have been taking
| advantage of the way maritime law limits their liability for
| their behavior by scrimping on maintenance as well as using
| ships essentially too large for the waterways they travel in.
| kfarr wrote:
| No it's not a coincidence, these incidents are a result of the
| design of the system. Excellent book on the topic with an
| entire chapter related to maritime safety (or lack thereof):
| https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Tec...
| kemiller wrote:
| Welp, someone at a maritime insurance company is having a bad
| day.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Let's say you had infinite money and no paperwork filings
| required. What is the fastest possible timeline in which a
| replacement bridge could be designed and completed?
|
| Just removing the detritus of the current bridge sounds like a
| multi month affair.
| marpstar wrote:
| I'd think that a place like an international shipping port
| would have equipment in relatively close proximity for handling
| (albeit much smaller) tasks like wreckage removal and the like.
|
| I have no idea what a practical timeline would be, but I think
| it's fair to say that it's less than your average 1.6 mile
| bridge.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| It probably won't take long to cut a hole in the wreckage to at
| least get one sea lane open so the port can still operate. A
| bunch of folks with metal cutting torches on a few dozen boats
| and a floating crane?
| DennisP wrote:
| According to this Baltimore news report, after 9/11 state
| officials had looked at putting bumpers around the piers that
| could have protected the bridge from an impact like this, but it
| was too expensive.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_-CpdVaHGg
| scoot wrote:
| Even compared to the economic impact of a bridge collapse and
| resulting port closure?
| DennisP wrote:
| Yeah I'm guessing just replacing the bridge will cost a lot
| more than the bumpers would have, even without counting the
| broader impacts.
| CivBase wrote:
| How could one build a bumper to protect the piers from an
| impact like this? That ship is massive and it sounds like it
| was going pretty fast. I'm having trouble imagining any
| solution that involves absorbing the impact. But I'm not a
| civil engineer. If something like this exists I'd be interested
| in reading about it.
| kfarr wrote:
| The bumper may be crushed and may need to be replaced but the
| best outcome is that it redirects the majority of the force
| away from the critical support structure of the bridge.
| greenavocado wrote:
| The boat changes direction after impact with the bumper
| tasuki wrote:
| It was a massive boat. They don't change direction very
| easily.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Well engineered small things can redirect a moving thing
| several orders of magnitude more massive. Consider
| guardrails on the side of a road; those guard rails might
| be less than 100 Kg but together they're rated to
| redirect the force of a car weighing thousands of Kg
| traveling at tens of K/h. That's a lot of force to
| redirect for such a small and cheap barrier; imaging what
| a more expensive and larger barrier can do.
| jgeada wrote:
| Does anybody keep track how often these ships lose all power?
|
| Wasn't that long ago that another massive cargo ship lost power
| in the Suez, crashed and blocked that channel for a while.
|
| Somehow I'd expect that there would be backup systems keeping
| basic rudder control going even in a total power failure, but
| clearly that isn't the case.
| sparky_z wrote:
| The Ever Given didn't lose power, it was just a very big ship
| trying to navigate through a very small, shallow channel and
| was hit by strong enough winds to knock it off course.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Worst possible time to have a technical issue. Feel bad for the
| crew, they couldn't do anything in this situation.
|
| Does anyone have any theories what could have gone wrong
| technically?
| jajko wrote:
| > Sorry, this content is not available in your region.
|
| Mkay then, gdpr is too much for some to accept I guess. Anybody
| got any mirror link?
| robblbobbl wrote:
| Holy shit. Such things should never happen.
| kfarr wrote:
| I see many comments talking about how shocking or rare this
| appears to be. In reality the maritime industry is extremely
| dangerous and accident prone as a result of the design of the
| system. Excellent book on the topic with an entire chapter
| dedicated to maritime: https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-
| Living-High-Risk-Tec...
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I never realized how ambiguously generous the term "Search &
| Rescue" was.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Sky News was able to secure a civil engineer to give insight and
| analysis into this disaster in the morning hours.
|
| It was a lightweight structure built in the spirit of minimizing
| cost and anticipating container ships that were approximately 1/4
| the mass that they are today. That giant ship smashing a critical
| base of support, the structure could not support itself and
| experienced rapid failure.
|
| Necessary action item: Structure owners adjacent to commercially-
| important waterways should reassess their risks of collision by
| modern-sized extreme ships and mitigate where possible to
| preserve life-safety and sometimes property.
| michidk wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/16-mile-bridge-baltimore-co...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| How long until Elon offers to dig a new tunnel under the Patapsco
| river? I bet he already has Boring people on it.
| okasaki wrote:
| He wouldn't be interested. He has a car company so he's only
| interested in sabotaging public transport.
| charlie0 wrote:
| How long did this event last from start to finish? Just wondering
| why there are cars still driving through the bridge moments
| before impact.
| __loam wrote:
| Supposedly the ship issued a mayday prior to losing power and
| hitting the bridge, so they were able to stop traffic and limit
| the number of people on the bridge during the accident. Most of
| the people who went down with it were construction workers.
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