Two things I’m fine not steering…boats and trailers of any kind.
Oh man, a long time ago before sat nav was really a thing, I got brutally lost in San Francisco towing an ~70 foot trailer. The really twisty, hilly streets. Buttigieg and fentanyl-inhaling homeless might still be blamed for all the gouges I put in the streets trying to get my trailer up impossibly steep hills. I’m glad it was before YouTube/TikTok, or my 35-point turns would also probably have gone viral. I’m really lucky I wasn’t pulled over or even arrested.
I showed up on time and acted like nothing happened.
not sure there was any time to stop traffic between there being a problem, contact and the collapse
Yeah looks like about 2 and half (or maybe 5 minutes) between the first loss of power and the impact. I would assume even less time between Oh shit we’re going to hit the bridge and impact.
Bridges definitely are not designed for the side force point load.
A couple people on twitter questioned why the bridge wasn’t protected from impact.
Construction began in 72, which means design started in 68-70. In 1969 the Encounter Bay was the largest ship in the world. It carried 1530 TEUs. From 72 to 81, the largest ship was the Hamburg Express, carrying 3000 TEUs.
The Dali can carry 10,000 TEUs.
The Hamburg Express was 273m long and 32m wide, displaced 48,700 tonnes.
The Dali 300m long 48m wide and displaces 95,128 tonnes
“ Container ship Dali appears to lose propulsion/electrical as it approaches Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Ship loses lighting and begins drifting. Without propulsion, the ship would have little directional control. It collides with the bridge tower. Shown at 2X speed.â€
Losing electrical power does not necessarily translate to loss of propulsion. It could cause a loss of steering control by rudder. The time from lights out to impact was not instantaneous. I think I saw that the ship regained lighting and started smoking heavy black shortly before impact impact. In a steam turbine ship and boiler fired plant that is usually a normal sign of answering an emergency backing bell as the burners struggle to catch up with the demand and combust cleanly. Reversing the ships propeller on steam turbines is not a bang bang evolution, sometimes a backing bell is called and it seems like eternity before it bites the water enough to halt any forward way on. The bigger the ship the longer the wait. I wonder if there was an attempt to use the ships anchors to stop the ship short. Use of tugs are common moving away from piers and then to facilitate the departure for the Harbor Pilot. I did not see the tugs or tug in the video. Suspect they/it were trailing off the port quarter. Currents are usually seen as tidal and along the channel flooding or ebbing and are not perpendicular. Water appears calm so there would be little to no wind affecting play. There is less steering control obviously when proceeding down current. Losing control minutes before passing under a bridge is the worst of all scenarios in restricted waters.
not sure there was any time to stop traffic between there being a problem, contact and the collapse
Yeah looks like about 2 and half (or maybe 5 minutes) between the first loss of power and the impact. I would assume even less time between Oh shit we’re going to hit the bridge and impact.
I know there are usually state troopers at each end of that bridge. And I gotta think they have “playbooks” and protocols for various situations. Including a ship about to hit a support. Or a low flying plane approaching and possibly hitting the bridge, high wind warnings, etc…
Yes, we don’t know the full timing and communication protocol to know whether there was enough time or not to do something differently. But I gotta think that the ship crew had an “Oh @#$ moment, we might hit the bridge”; alerted the right folks; and the safety and contingency protocols kick in. But maybe I’m too optimistic about preparedness, and none of this happened.
Personally, now I’m scanning water below to see if anything may bring a bridge down that I’m crossing… and gun it across.
I can imagine the convo with the officer after getting pulled over for speeding… “Well, I thought that boat was going to bring the bridge down, so I was trying to make sure I was across. That and my bridge phobia”.
Crazy how fast the bridge came down. You just expect something from a movie, with plenty of time for scary suspenseful shots of cars teetering on the edge. That looked like a tower of cards or a Jenga tower coming down all at once.
As gofigure said, I would separate loss of electrical power from loss of propulsion. Sometimes they go together, but sometimes not. If they lost electrical power but the engines were still running, they could have lost control of speed or rudder, which is tricky because you’re constantly adjusting speed and rudder as you navigate restricted waters like that. Usually, you’ll find yourself needing to use a certain amount of rudder just to keep going straight down the middle of the channel. You can lose power, and suddenly that rudder that was keeping you fair in the channel flops over and now you have the rudder and the current both pushing you in the wrong direction, and can’t stop or steer out of it.
The ship would surely have had a pilot aboard from Maryland Pilots, and maybe a docking pilot who would control the tugs when they got closer to their berth. That said, there’s not much a pilot can do if the ship loses propulsion or power.
It looks like the ship tried to put on a backing bell right before the allision, based on the big belch of black smoke. But that looked way too late to have had much chance of saving the situation.
The ship and pilots would have been in communications with vessel traffic services who help manage inbound and outbound ships. The pilots usually have check in points so VTS knows where ships are in the channel, and when they’ll be at their berths or exiting the channel for sea. I don’t know that there would have been any communication with someone who could have managed vehicle traffic on the bridge itself.
My co-worker’s tenant goes across that bridge every night, about that time. She decided to stay somewhere else last night and didn’t need to cross the bridge. This is close to his house and he crosses it almost every day and said it’s been a pretty crazy morning.
Two things I’m fine not steering…boats and trailers of any kind.
Oh man, a long time ago before sat nav was really a thing, I got brutally lost in San Francisco towing an ~70 foot trailer. The really twisty, hilly streets. Buttigieg and fentanyl-inhaling homeless might still be blamed for all the gouges I put in the streets trying to get my trailer up impossibly steep hills. I’m glad it was before YouTube/TikTok, or my 35-point turns would also probably have gone viral. I’m really lucky I wasn’t pulled over or even arrested.
I showed up on time and acted like nothing happened.
No experience hauling a trailer but I have driven my FILs pontoon onto it’s trailer a few times and it’s never a fun task. You have to approach it slowly and the wind just pushes the boat sideways. You have about 6 inches of wiggle room in which to put the pontoon hulls into their spots on the trailer. Always took me at least 5 attempts to get it right. Meanwhile there’s usually someone waiting behind you to get their boat out, scrutinizing your driving.
Thankfully he has a guy that takes it out each fall now so I don’t have to do it any more.
Looks like it had just left the dock and moved a couple of miles own the river. I don’t know if there would still be tugboats around at that point. You can see the track veer right just before the bridge.
The Baltimore bridge was clearly a deliberate attack by a Biden sanctioned WEF death squad financed by Pfizer through sales of 5G heat pumps installed by drag queens who teach children to identify as kittens that demand kitty litter boxes be installed in public school bathrooms
It’s sometimes hard to tell these days but this is satire.
Ship Sent Out Mayday Call Before Crashing Into Baltimore Bridge The ship sent out a mayday call when it experienced a power cut prior to the crash, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at a press conference. The call allowed officials to stop vehicles from entering the bridge before the crash, which likely saved lives.
6 People Missing Believed To Be Bridge Workers: Officials
The six people believed missing following the early morning collapse were members of a bridge construction crew, officials said at a press conference.
The crew was reportedly on the bridge repairing potholes. Their work had nothing to do with the structure of the bridge, which was up to code, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said alongside federal and state officials.
“The preliminary investigation points to an accident,†Moore said. “We haven’t seen any credible evidence of a terror attack.â€