Francis Scott Key Bridge collapses in Baltimore after ship strike

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Sad.............

Mar 26, 2024

The Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning after a ship struck it, officials say. Rescue efforts are underway after several vehicles fell into the water below.


8:27
 

Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses into water after being hit by cargo ship​

Baltimore’s Key Bridge has collapsed after it was hit by a container ship, sending cars that were crossing at the time plunging into the waters of the Patapsco River.

At least seven people are believed to be in the water and rescue efforts are ongoing at the site of the collapse, according to the Baltimore Fire Department.

Multiple videos shared on social media showed a large cargo ship ramming into one of the bridge’s support pillars, causing it to come crashing down into the river.

A large portion of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is now under water, as flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed the Maryland State Police circling the site of the crash in a helicopter.

Kevin Cartwright, director of communications for the fire department, said the city was dealing with a “developing mass casualty incident”.

The 911 calls relating to the incident began from around 1.30am, he said, as members of the public said a vessel travelling out of Baltimore’s port had struck a column on the bridge. Multiple vehicles, including one the size of a tractor-trailer, were on the bridge at the time of strike.

More:

 
Thoughts and prayers to those souls affected.

Both the bridge and the waterway carry a lot of commodities on a daily basis. This will have a major impact on commodities up and down the eastern seaboard.

As someone who spent some time on merchant vessels, I wonder what the hell happened? Good god!
 
Radar of the ships before and after MV Dali hit bridge.

 
In bad taste I know but...

68ce1a7aa8dfb974efe5fd1d0d72e7ae860e63a3b6af5571b9aec80550dad56b.jpg
 
Watch live views from Baltimore where a major bridge snapped and collapsed after a container ship rammed into it early Tuesday, and several vehicles fell into the river below. Rescuers were searching for at least seven people in the water. Read more here: http://apne.ws/HopIwH1

 
Folks on the twitters claiming the ship was hacked:

 
One pillar took out the whole bridge? That is a big span though. Ship seemed to be going pretty fast but that video appeared sped up as well.
 
pmbug said:
Folks on the twitters claiming the ship was hacked:
Click to expand...
Or maybe, Space Aliens!

It's possible this could have been deliberate or the result of sabotage; but I think this is an old-fashioned crisis of competence. These things happen. They shouldn't, but they do.

They happen more commonly when training and promotion are lax (as in DEI). They're more likely to happen when regulatory agencies, like port authorities and agencies that control harbor navigation, are staffed with incompetent or politically-connected drones.

And Baltimore is deep in crisis. Just yesterday, it was in the alt-news that the Baltimore Police Department was down to a skeleton crew, unable to answer even active 911 calls involving crimes-in-progress.

Seems we are truly circling the bowl.
 
They sure poured on the coal at 16/17 seconds above. Ship lights starting and stopping. Not just someone asleep
 
Voodoo said:
One pillar took out the whole bridge? That is a big span though. Ship seemed to be going pretty fast but that video appeared sped up as well.
Click to expand...
That's all it takes. A bridge that size is not the simple beam-truss bridge, with each span able to stand alone; it's a cantilevered truss bridge that depends on other sections to provide stability.

Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? The movie footage of it coming down, shows the same reaction. The center section, which caught air (as it did from when it was first paved with a solid decking) started twisting, from apparently one broken cable in the center of the span. That caused the center section to come down, and the two shore sections quickly fell in succession.
 
KnowWhy said:
They sure poured on the coal at 16/17 seconds above. Ship lights starting and stopping. Not just someone asleep
Click to expand...
I suspect a breaker tripped, probably close to the ship's main generator. Perhaps before that happened there was an unfolding emergent issue, distracting the bridge; and then, once they got auxiliary power on, they saw they'd drifted off course and were headed for the piling. So, a rapid reversal on the ship's engine...full power astern.

Not nearly enough time to make much of a difference.
 
M/V Dali in Antwerp, Belgium in 2016

shipwrecklog.com

Dali

The 300 meter long, 111,032 dwt container ship Dali allided with the quay at Antwerp, Belgium. The Dali was attempting to leave the container terminal for Bremerhaven when the bow of the boxship sw…
shipwrecklog.com shipwrecklog.com
 
It surely appears tht the bridge impact was a result of the ship losing power (and steering). Whether the loss of power was a "Boeing" or something else remains to be determined.
 
Wouldn't there have been a harbor pilot on board to get them safely under the bridges?
 
CiscoKid said:
Wouldn't there have been a harbor pilot on board to get them safely under the bridges?
Click to expand...
According to one report I read, there was a pilot or team onboard.

But if everything goes to hell in the engine or electrical rooms...everyone is going to be distracted.

Remember, the bridge doesn't have DIRECT control of the engine. Communication is through engine-room telegraph...that big round thing with the handle on it. The helm has steering motors, surely electrical...if the power goes out, probably the helm would have no control, either. It would be up to the engine room to use an auxiliary rudder control, through phone communication. Which was probably dead, too, when the power was out.

How much redundancy there is, in these critical systems...I don't know. I was never a merchant mariner.
 
... according to the Baltimore Banner's Justin Fenton, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has confirmed that the whole incident could have been much worse — and thanks to timely actions from the ship's crew, many lives may have been saved.

Per the governor, the ship's collision was due to a power loss that disabled their ability to navigate — but those on board issued a mayday call to emergency officials onshore, and they were able to restrict the traffic going over the bridge. As it was, some cars were reportedly on the bridge when it went down, but many more might have been otherwise.
...
Click to expand...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...-got-saved-before-bridge-collapse/ar-BB1kz6Wd
 
Casey Jones said:
That's all it takes. A bridge that size is not the simple beam-truss bridge, with each span able to stand alone; it's a cantilevered truss bridge that depends on other sections to provide stability.

Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? The movie footage of it coming down, shows the same reaction. The center section, which caught air (as it did from when it was first paved with a solid decking) started twisting, from apparently one broken cable in the center of the span. That caused the center section to come down, and the two shore sections quickly fell in succession.
Click to expand...

I was thinking one of those 4 concrete supports. But from that other angle it clearly smashes the whole thing.

I don't understand why they steered the thing Right? They were drifting right and then "corrected" by trying to go right some more. that was 100,000 tons that went from 7 knots to 1 knot almost instantly. Anyone wanna calculate the force of that collision? It's huuuuuge.
 
Voodoo said:
I was thinking one of those 4 concrete supports. But from that other angle it clearly smashes the whole thing.

I don't understand why they steered the thing Right? They were drifting right and then "corrected" by trying to go right some more. that was 100,000 tons that went from 7 knots to 1 knot almost instantly. Anyone wanna calculate the force of that collision? It's huuuuuge.
Click to expand...
First, it's probably a single-screw ship. As any power-boat operator knows, throwing the boat rapidly into reverse, will cause the rear end to skate sideways while backing up.

This is probably aggravated in that the ship was high on the water - ballast probably pumped out to navigate the channel. The screw was probably close to the surface, maybe even partly out of the water.

The ship has side thrusters, doubtless; but all this happened in the space of a few minutes, and WHILE they were trying to deal with the electrical bugaboos.
 
Voodoo said:
Could be malice and could be incompetence. But the angle of attack was dead center.
Click to expand...
Seeing how the crew gunned the engine, I think that was sheer chance.

No, I don't think they gunned it forward. It seems there's some crabbing of the stern, in those vids. PLUS, the bridge put the forward searchlight on. Full power astern.

No, this was an emergency, and it just happened that what they did was wrong. Or at least, was too late.

It's how accidents unfold. It's almost-never JUST one event; but several, together, at the wrong time. Consider the Titanic - missing binoculars; no moon; the third mate ordering the rudder moved to dodge the iceberg, where in fact just ramming it would probably have SAVED the ship. Crumpled the bow, but the bulkheads behind it would have kept the ship afloat. But sideswiping it, opened five compartments to the sea.

Here, again. Ordering full astern, caused crabbing, aiming the bow the wrong way.

Am I wrong? Time will tell. This isn't the action of ONE man. The pilot or officer in charge (depending on protocols) would have to give the order; the helmsman would have to relay it with the engine telegraph. The engine-room crew would have to implement the order. The pilot would be observing it all, and probably taking notes.

That's at LEAST four persons observing, plus Event Recorders. If it was deliberate, we will know in short order. Or we will see a news blackout, which will tell us the same.
 
Just my luck I was shipping all my bullion without insurance to a warehouse when the truck went down to Davey Jones' locker. Arrrrrrgggg!
 

Retired Merchant Marine reacts to video of cargo ship striking Key Bridge in Baltimore​

Mar 26, 2024

We spoke with Capt. John Konrad about what may have led to the crash Tuesday.


8:05
 
And Sal Mercogliano gives his play-by-play, based on his knowledge as a mariner and instructor.

 
So, you're the Captain. How long do you wait before calling 911 to have bridge traffic halted?

I have a feeling this is going to be the crux of many future lawsuits.

 
<SLV> said:
Why were any vehicles or construction personnel on the bridge at all?
Click to expand...

What do you mean? The bridge was open to traffic. Boat has problems, crew issues emergency mayday, folks on land respond by closing trffic to bridge. There is obviously some time delay from receiving the mayday to mobilizing police or whatever was used to close the bridge. It's not like cops were waiting and ready to go at the bridge entries at 1:30am just in case.
 
Casey Jones said:
Perhaps before that happened there was an unfolding emergent issue,
Click to expand...
Clearly there was, as the ship's lights went off and on at least a couple times prior to impact, as in this vid.

0:59 ship lights go off
1:58 lights go back online
3:03 lights go off again
3:36 some lights are back online
5:09 crash

 
Gilligan should have dropped the anchor.
 
<SLV> said:
Why were any vehicles or construction personnel on the bridge at all?
Click to expand...
In many busy areas, and especially on bridges, maintenance is done at off-peak times.

Here in Tourist Montana...they do the summer road repairs late at night, often. Have intense diffused light trees set up so the crews can kinda-see their work.

Probably traffic is unbelievable on the bridge. Who lives in Blue America? The very poor, on buses, and the very rich, who take their expensive cars to work, alone. No, they won't carpool. No, they're not going to live with **THOSE PEOPLE**. They commute great distances, such bridges make it possible to live two counties away from work.
 
<SLV> said:
Why were any vehicles or construction personnel on the bridge at all?
Click to expand...
Daily traffic is/was so high that potholes couldn't be repaired. Night work was the solution.

California too works their roads at night for the same reason.

What they really need to do is have more than one bridge!

Need to analyze transportation weaknesses across the nation and 'fix' them instead of warring other nations and paying illegals to sit around doing nothing.
 
searcher said:
There was at least one pilot on board.

Click to expand...

The above video is the best explanation of what happened. Shit happens!

The interwebs are going crazy with conspiracy theories. I'm amazed how many folks, 'normal' folks are biting that hook.

One guy said "Look! Dynamite explosions (sparks from electricals)!! They blew it up!"

It remains to be seen what exactly happened. I'm leaning toward electrical problems on board as suggested in video above. The ship probably is being run on a shoe string and needs to be retired. I wonder how many other ships are ignoring issues...?
 
Goldhedge said:
The above video is the best explanation of what happened. Shit happens!

The interwebs are going crazy with conspiracy theories. I'm amazed how many folks, 'normal' folks are biting that hook.

One guy said "Look! Dynamite explosions (sparks from electricals)!! They blew it up!"

It remains to be seen what exactly happened. I'm leaning toward electrical problems on board as suggested in video above. The ship probably is being run on a shoe string and needs to be retired. I wonder how many other ships are ignoring issues...?
Click to expand...
Agreed with all of this. All the You-Crane lying, all the Biden lying, all the Jab Follies...just have us all hair-triggered and disbelieving everything.

But this, I think, stands out plainly. This could easily have happened just as it's presented. And it would have been HARD to STAGE. No way to knock a ship's power 100-percent out at precisely the right time, without elaborate coordination. Which itself would have been hard, since radio communication inside a steel ship is virtually impossible.

Moreover, the pilot called the port authority minutes before and told them the ship had lost steering, to close the bridge. AND, a crew went and dropped one anchor - which wouldn't have done much, dragging an anchor doesn't work well with a large ship, but they tried it. That doesn't speak of crew conspiracy.

They wouldn't need power to drop the anchor - it's a gravity fall, with a friction brake, on most ships.

The real problem here is, as you suggest, cutting corners. Seems this ship has had a number of past issues and citations, including one involving loss of electrical power. Substandard equipment or no maintenance, or both.
 

Q&A on MV Dali versus Bridge with What's Going on With Shipping and gCaptain​

Streamed live 9 hours ago

Q&A with Sal Mercogliano of What's Going on With Shipping and John Konrad of gCaptain on the allision between MV Dali and the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.


50:06

gcaptain.com

Allision - Nautical Word of the Day

In covering the recent Cosco Busan incident (now the Overseas Reymar allision HERE) I have noticed most of the news articles have made a small error in terminology, not to mention the emails...
gcaptain.com gcaptain.com

In the vid they talk about possible fuel contamination. Think about your car and what could happen with water in the fuel.
 
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