Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore... (1 Viewer)

[Merl]

Looks like they lost power and therefore steering, possibly fired up the emergency generator or secondary gen and lost it too. It does not look like they dropped anchor before colliding with the bridge as the chain is currently straight up and down. Hard to tell. Terrible day for people in that bridge.

I don't think dropping the anchors would have stopped it. Just too much momentum for then to get a grip in the mud, From the video they are showing on the news this morning the ship looked out of control and likely the current was pushing it into the support peer.

 

[Optimus Prime]

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s Maritime Port Authority said Tuesday evening local time that it was investigating the collision and providing “full cooperation” to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The authority, which regulates marine services in Singapore, confirmed that a Singapore-registered vessel struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge around 1:30 a.m. Eastern time.

There were 22 crew members on board during the collision, it said.
“MPA is in contact with the U.S. Coast Guard and the ship management company to provide the necessary assistance,” said the authority.


The cargo ship, Dali, is about 48 meters (157 feet) wide and 300 meters (984 feet) long and was built in 2015, according to MarineTraffic.com.


The vessel was en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, according to Vessel Finder, which live tracks global shipping, and had been due to arrive on April 22. Before Baltimore, it had called at ports in Norfolk and New York in the United States and before that the Panama Canal.

The registered owner of the ship is Grace Ocean Pte Ltd., and it is managed by Synergy Marine Group. Neither immediately responded to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

However, an official from Grace Ocean told global shipping news site TradeWinds that the vessel was under the bridge at the time and that the company is “working with the ship’s technical manager Synergy Marine to determine what happened.”

“Whilst the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined, the Dali has now mobilized its qualified individual incident response service,” Synergy Marine Group said in a statement to Reuters, adding that all crew members, including the two pilots who were aboard, have been accounted for and that there are no reports of any injuries among the crew……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/26/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-maryland/

 

[Bayouboy]

While the boat clearly had two significant power outages, it certainly hit the bridge support head on. It will be interesting to see what maneuvers the captain made to avoid hitting the bridge. Sure hope some kind of cyberattack didn't occur.

 

[saintfan-n-alexla]

While the boat clearly had two significant power outages, it certainly hit the bridge support head on. It will be interesting to see what maneuvers the captain made to avoid hitting the bridge. Sure hope some kind of cyberattack didn't occur.

probably way too close to do anything

 

[Madmarsha]

I didn't know this bridge only opened in '77

Francis Scott Key Bridge (Baltimore) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bayouboy]

It just seems as though the ship steered into the bridge support at the end. I assume it has to be very difficult to steer a vessel this big....especially after losing power, but just looks fishy.

 

[Maxp]

I don't think dropping the anchors would have stopped it. Just too much momentum for then to get a grip in the mud, From the video they are showing on the news this morning the ship looked out of control and likely the current was pushing it into the support peer.

It is standard operating procedure to have crew standing by anchors when leaving/coming to port for this very reason. If the crew didn't let go anchors, they are looking at jail time.

 

[Waymer]

It just seems as though the ship steered into the bridge support at the end. I assume it has to be very difficult to steer a vessel this big....especially after losing power, but just looks fishy.

Obviously we'll find out, but I wouldn't read too much into that. They likely made an adjustment during the power outages for multiple reasons. Primarily because you have to make that turn in general leaving Baltimore. If they don't start their turn, they run the risk of hitting both the northern most support structure, as well as Fort Carroll. The larger movement in general requires that sort of swing coming out of Baltimore. It's far more likely that they tried to engage standard maneuvers and lost power again during the process. Also worth remembering that ships don't use their standard captains leaving ports, local port pilots do it.

But again, we'll see. But really, if we're going to go the conspiracy route, for as big and tragic as this is, there are far, far greater targets, times of day, or ways for something like this to happen if it was to be intentional.

 

[Merl]

It just seems as though the ship steered into the bridge support at the end. I assume it has to be very difficult to steer a vessel this big....especially after losing power, but just looks fishy.

That could easily be caused by the river current and or winds if the ship lost power.

 

[Bayouboy]

Fair enough. Crazy sheet though!

 

[Maxp]

After viewing the video again, it looks as if they may have gone full astern just before hitting the bridge. You can see the stern walking to port.

 

[MarylandWHODAT]

Have driven over this bridge many, many times. This is not only a main thoroughfare for cargo ships coming out of Baltimore but a main drive for traffic.

Scary........

 

[Optimus Prime]

A huge shipping vessel that collided with a major bridge in Baltimore has left numerous people missing and could cause significant economic and social disruption, experts say.

Many questions remain about the collision, including why the ship hit with the bridge in the first place. But many of them are structural: how was the ship able to reach the bridge, why was it not protected against such collisions, and why the bridge collapsed so quickly once the collision had happened.

Experts say it may be too early to say exactly what happened during the collision and the collapse that resulted. But they caution that bridges of this kind are specifically built with protections against such crashes – and that it may have required a huge impact to make the bridge fall in this way.

Bridges have collapsed from collisions with ships before. Between 1960 and 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses that happened after they were hit by a marine vessel, said Toby Mottram from the University of Warwick.

That ever-present danger means that modern bridges are built specifically with such collisions in mind. Engineers have developed a range of requirements and safety solutions aimed at securing the integrity of the bridge even in the case of the collision.

Bridges of this kind – large, and crossing shipping lanes – are required to protect the piers or columns that hold them up. Those protections come in a variety of different forms, said Robert Benaim, a bridge designer and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

“These protections are either in the form of structural protections like ‘sacrificial dolphins’, which are made of steel and embedded in the seabed to stop or divert a ship. They can also be in the form of artificial islands; these are for very large ships and mean the ship will never reach the bridge pier itself.”

The Francis Scott Key Bridge is relatively modern, so experts would expect that it was built with the assumption that its supporting piers might experience a collision. Those piers are important because any structural failure in them – especially in the centre – means that the whole bridge would collapse.

But those protections only go so far. “A vessel’s mass and velocity are key factors in the level of impact force generated and there is an economic and practical limit to what level of impact force can be designed for,” said Lee Cunningham, a reader in structural engineering at the University of Manchester.

“Similarly, the direction of impact is also an important factor and design assumptions for this would likely be based on the position of the dedicated navigation channel.”

In the case of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, its design in the 1970s might not have taken account of the vast size and power of the ships that sail under it today. The ship that collided with the bridge – the ‘Dali’ – was vast, at 300 meters long and 48.2 meters wide, loaded with huge amounts of cargo and travelling at a still unknown speed.…….

Why the Baltimore bridge collapsed so quickly

Bridges usually have protections to keep them safe from collisions, experts say – but the huge force of the ‘Dali’ might have overwhelmed them

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Merl]

Press conference in 4 minutes. Hope to hear some details but I doubt it.

 

[2009ring]

There wasn't any tug boats accompanying the ship, apparently they are "optional" on this route/port.

As someone who works in ocean cargo, this is going to screw up a lot of things for a lot of companies and people. Port is going to be closed for awhile. Philly/Norfolk/New York prepare for congestion.