Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses after being hit by a container ship

Latest update:

6 construction workers presumed dead... “We’re going away from the search and rescue portion to a recovery operation,”

Police praised for stopping traffic going across bridge once they became aware of ship mayday, averting further loss of life.

https://www.thejournal.ie/six-workers-presumed-dead-baltimore-search-6338400-Mar2024/

And smoke while you were in the plane. Some things weren't the good old days! Plus drink yourself silly for cheap.

Very interesting now i'm wondering what caused the turn to starboard as it doesn't look like simple drifting with a centered rudder to me especially if they were trying to steer to port and had dropped an anchor.

A fairly new ship and the power just goes and no emergency generators that activate immediately in such a situation

the insurance underwriters for the billion quids worth or cargo destroyed and held up will get answers

Aye, having read the thread, and with no knowledge whatsoever of bridge engineering or ship engineering or the port in question, I’m still perplexed as to how anyone could think a mass of that size would be so easy to divert from it’s course, even if it had never lost power! It’s as though it just went into the port at the wrong angle, and then it was inevitable they were going to hit the bridge. The only question would be how much damage would be done.

I think there’s some leeway built into bridges of that size to allow for sway in the wind, but the ship hitting it must have been like pinging an already tense rubber band. I thought the footage had been sped up, with the speed at which the bridge collapsed.

You can see the change in course on this animation from Marine Traffic. As has been suggested by previous posters, the final turn to the right (starboard) may have been caused by the anchor being dropped?

The Tampa Sunshine Skyway Bridge gets a lot of talk in this also. The original had a collision in the 80s iirc and the replacement bridge had a set of large offset pillars built around it to protect the pillars from a direct hit. Considering the drift of this cargo ship in baltimore though it’s not clear even those would have deflected a ship in this case type.

Probably the most sound type of barrier though you could argue the main pillars need more than 4 bollards protecting them (see the smaller pillars) no matter how beefy you build the island the pillar itself sits on, crashing into that will transfer all sorts of forces into the main structure, these barriers being gapped from the main structure, a collision is less likely to have an adverse effect on the bridge itself.

As for why this didn’t become a national standard y’alls guess is as good as any, I’m gonna wager politics.

Some places it is. For lighter traffic idk about cargo traffic eg

Can’t do too much diversion of flow, wildlife etc.

Oh yeah good old sedimentation. I rib on CivEs a lot but they know their dirt

Worth noting that there are simple enough techniques to prevent such accidents. Wouldn't even require a new bridge or anything. Safety standards could make these avoidable.

Apart from the severe veering it came to a very abrupt halt. It looks like the anchor stopped and swerved it. Armchair mariner comment mind you.

Which I sadly suspect Republicans will obstruct funding to support cleanup and replacement for because it's on "Biden's watch" and in "Biden's economy" because they have nothing else to run on.

Wapo visualized the eastern seaboard traffic heatmap, ill post the free link

https://wapo.st/3vxdg8b

Baltimore has two tunnels.

But oversized and hazardous loads are not permitted to use them.

This bridge had about 35,000 vehicle movements a day. About a fifth of what the M50 gets.

The normal car/truck driver won't see huge delays as they will use the tunnels, but haz and oversized will need to make a much longer journey around the top of Baltimore.