Can you someone narrate the ship's actions in the video? Chuck?!?!
******This is just my perspective, of what the video showed.**********
1. Boat was able to steer before contact, it steered directly into piling. Possibly a 60-100 degree right turn was made.
2. Lights went off and on three times.
3. Smoke from engine came at the 13 second mark, boat was able to turn hard for 10 seconds after the fact.
0-2 seconds boat is normal
3-12 seconds lights are off from boat, boat travels parallel with bridge.
13-23 seconds lights are back on, boat makes hard right turn towards the general direction of piling, engine smokes.
24-29 seconds lights go off again, boat is basically following direction from the 13-23 second mark.
30-40 seconds ship lights back on, adjusts it's angle of attack to be perfectly in line with piling.
41-47 seconds lights still on, and boat appears to be finally steering away from piling.
48-54 seconds boat hits piling, lights turn off on ship, and bridge falls.
The questions I would ask the captain of the ship:
1. How was the steering during the 50 seconds before impact?
2. If you were out of control, why not steer away from the bridge?
3. Would you have done anything different, if put in this situation again?
NTSB will get all those answers and publish a report but basically it looks like a power failure followed by restoration of power (or backup kicking in) and then another final power failure. In the meantime we know they dropped anchor and tried to “put it in reverse” during that same period. Like Merl said, you can’t stop on a dime and small changes in course have impacts hundreds of yards ahead.
We’ll see what they come back with but I suspect it will look a lot like catastrophic engineering failures are the root cause and not that the pilot/captain zigged when he should have zagged.