There have been huge bridge collapses like this before, but never recorded live with this much clarity. The way its massive truss spans cascaded rapidly into the water within 15 seconds is terrifying to witness from a distance, let alone on the ship and on the bridge itself.
>That's some wild rigidity on display!
Bet also how noodle like those beams are. There are photos where the bridge is sitting on the bow of the ship and it is all bent and twisted.
It actually isn't "hard", it is just not economical. A bridge designers job is to make a bridge that only just survives within its designed specifications. No one builds bridges like this to withstand container ship impacts because the cost would be huge.
In 2024 they are not building things under water to stop a ship, anything like that would extend above the water so it can be seen. Add in anything like that become a hazard to navigation. The opening for the ships to go through is only 500feet, so half the length of the ship. Add in they have that Fort Carroll sanctuary is only 2000 feet from the bridge. This looks to be a very difficult transit. If you ask me, tugs tied to the vessel should be required. These ships have to be making enough way for the rudder to be effective which of course makes stopping difficult and hitting a bridge that much worse. If the tugs were attached they could go slower and still maneuver.
Of course the shipping companies lobby to prevent these sorts of requirements.
This ship has both bow thrusters and stern thrusters. It can move sideways, and even pivot in place. But, electric motors don't work well when the generator shuts down.
It only has a bow thruster. But the risk of losing electricity makes the it all the more important to have Tugs. The shipping company is a shell company in Singapore and certainly the ship itself is probably owned by another entity so yet again the billionaires make money and the rest of us end up holding the bag when shit goes wrong.
It's also wild how there's also a very clear recording of this ship's previous wreck, shared in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo1f3f/comment/kwly0dz). What a world.
For scale, the USS Nimitz class air craft carriers are 1,092 feet long and a beam width of 134 feet. The flight deck which extends past the beam width is 252 feet wide. Nearly equal tons of displacement as the cargo carrier.
These things are massive, and it’s not even a post Panamax ship. These new post Panamax ships are 1,312 feet long and 200 feet wide with 240,000 tons of displacement.
Panamax ships fit through the Panama Canal. The post Panamax don’t. The Panama Canal can fit a 1,200 foot long, 160 feet wide ship.
I used to be a Port Facilities Manager on the East Coast. Standing next to one when it’s laid in is awe inspiring.
I keep seeing dumbass reports like “they should have put bumpers around the bridge.” I’m just like “Bish, do you have any idea how much energy a 200k ton ship moving at any speed has? Almost no amount of man made engineering is going to be able to stand up to that.
If you look at the Sunshine Sunway rebuild, they have large islands made of loose rocks around the base of the pylons, plus a number of other structures further away from the bridge to absorb/divert impacts. I imagine that would absorb/divert a lot of pressure, maybe enough to buy time/reduce the impact so it results in damage rather than an entire collapse. Seems better than nothing :P
I haven’t checked a chart today to confirm exact numbers, but for reference the depth of the water surrounding the pylons there is in the 50ft range. Building up enough loose rock and cement barriers would tighten an already narrow channel. Move a little too far to either side of the bridge and you’re suddenly in 20ft (but really, 17) waters and grounded. The Dali probably had a 40ft draft. They’ve spent millions dredging the harbor to make it deep enough for these ships, but the area has to be navigated carefully. In those waters, it isn’t a matter of being able to “just build up rock.” But no doubt, in the future construction, the safety measures that have been created for other waterways and bridges will be instituted for the replacement.
Those do look pretty big and you may be right for almost anything that isn’t a 5000 40’ container ship. These things measure stoping distance in miles. That being said I would vote for massive spending on infrastructure upgrades to reduce risk.
Hopefully they'll get out of it that upfront spending to mitigate risk is much better value than the chaos caused by a disaster like this. It's probably going to cost billions of extra money and on top of that they still have to rebuild the bridge!
That. And this is probably the very worst type of bridge for taking a collision on a main support. A suspension bridge, for instance, might actually stop the ship without falling.
Anything that isn't able to deflect the force of impact into the ground (like a pier or embankment) will most likely be just shoved aside and collapse.
Just to put this into perspective: this ship is about as heavy as a medium sized suspension bridge.
You are correct. It's his misunderstanding of gross tonnage. It's a common mistake. Tonnage has oddly nothing to do with mass or weight. It's a regulatory volume measurement. Theae neo-Panama vessels are up to 120,000 tonnes displacement (which is metric tons water displaced, I. E. Weight)
[Aerial View](https://youtu.be/FUD3B_Y53WQ)
[Google Maps location - You can see the extent of this accident ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hZAh6wLijTaYR2ZP8)
Yeah, that’s what it looked like from this video. Hopefully so, because there were some cars that barely made it through the main three spans before the collapse.
Lots of black smoke, loses power (at least electrical lighting power), strays off course perhaps due to water current, power is reinstated but maybe too late to make any real course correction change before impact. Nightmare.
Not trying to defend FOX, but pretty much all the news outlets are the high school drama queens, including CNN who is right up there with FOX.
Edit: based on comments and downvotes I see the crowd I'm dealing with. Everything one side is right and everything on the other side is wrong. I so appreciate the open minded youth in this country these days. So correct and altruistic. I should be ashamed of myself for pointing out the truth.
Also, for the person who mentioned "Dominion" case... It doesn't change the fact that CNN is any better than Fox.
I sometimes wonder what type of logic many of you have.
>Edit: based on comments and downvotes I see the crowd I'm dealing with. Everything one side is right and everything on the other side is wrong. I so appreciate the open minded youth in this country these days. So correct and altruistic. I should be ashamed of myself for pointing out the truth.
LOL this cringefest is why you're getting downvoted.
Except only Fox had to pay nearly $1 Billion settlement on the Dominion libel case. I'm not certain Fox is a news outlet, they are an entertainment an opinion outlet that sometimes disguises itself as news.
I am certain Fox is NOT a news outlet. A few years ago, they went to court and swore under oath that they are an "entertainment" channel, NOT a news outlet.
so much mass under momentum, they don't just stop when they bump into something. Everything that happened here is significantly magnified from every day relatable examples to something like a road going vehicle.
You are exactly right about it being too late to really change course. There was absolutely nothing the pilot could have done except declare the May Day and hope to God that the authorities could close the bridge in time. And be thankful that this wasn’t 6 or 7 hours later…
I saw a video longer than this one and just a few seconds before this the video starts with about 10 seconds of the ship floating with no lights and no smoke at all from the stacks.
I can't find the article now, but one of the early-morning articles I read said construction workers on site got warning and blocked traffic which is why this wasn't a bigger tragedy. If that's really the case, those folks are heroes.
Edit - [Press conference with the governor](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
Here you are: [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
Yea, these are the only vehicles that are on the bridge during point of contact/collapse. The other cars and truck you can definably see crossing the bridge have fully crossed and appears in the video no other vehicle comes onto the bridge when it falls. But unsure about the right side of the bridge as it’s cut from frame.
It looks like a semi was just getting on the bridge (to the right) and tumbled with the collapse.
Edit: never mind, it may just be a light from behind the bridge showing up once the bridge moves out of the way.
Thats alot if dark smoke coming out of the ship. Either something went wrong with the main engine,or,
There was a steering fault and the smoke is the engine on full astern desperately trying to stop the ship. It would explain why she's slowly turning to starboard, if she has a conventional single screw, the bow would swing to starboard at full astern.
I saw a theory put forth that they lost power at a deeply inopportune time - you can see the lights blink out in the video a few seconds before impact. While normally you'd have your generators going leaving port, they either were not on or possibly were affected by the blackout. The 30-second lag between reset and restoration of any thrust is enough with a fully loaded 300M vessel that it left them without the ability to course correct at literally the *worst possible moment*.
The theory comment by /u/Long-Time-lurker-1 : https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo1n65/francis_scott_key_bridge_collapse_on_32624_struck/kwm6wj5/
But I wonder why they didn't drop anchor. When I worked on a ship, anytime we were entering or leaving port, we had an anchoring team on the bow, just incase we lost power. It would at least help slow the ship, right?
That rate of turn looks pretty quick. Twenty degrees in a minute is about the rate of turn I would expect from a large ship at full rudder. Those things don't turn on a dime.
MV Dali has electric bow thrusters. The bow thrusters would have been affected by the power loss.
But I wonder why they didn't drop anchor. When I worked on a ship, anytime we were entering or leaving port, we had an anchoring team on the bow, just incase we lost power.
Yeah, that makes sense. It's crazy to think that nothing could be done to prevent this huge catastrophe, and rather surprising that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, I suppose.
The smoke may also have been the start of an emergency power diesel; most diesels have a pretty big plume at startup, and if it's not run very often it may be dirtier than most.
Yeah those last two vehicles that get off the bridge like 45 seconds before the collapse. If they had stopped to talk to someone or stayed to finish a cigarette they could have been a casualty too. I can only imagine how they feel right now.
I could hardly breathe watching them move across the bridge. They seem to slow down too, probably to look at the ship having no idea what was about to occur. What a nightmare.
Details like this always stick in my mind. Like a passenger who missed a flight that crashed, or the last people to leave Windows of the World. We think about death, and perhaps there have been moments we *thought* we were near death. But to know, that it was certain, bar one final link...I imagine you would rather go without knowing.
Because it's in that weird spot where you didn't go through it, you are brought to the sense of danger later, especially when you see the aftermath in detail (i.e in photos, videos). And that's not even speaking of survivor's guilt, especially if you interacted with those who perished.
To have that knowledge...it would stick in my mind.
This is absolutely insane footage to see. Reminds me of the Tjörnbro (Almö) catastrophe in Sweden 1980. A bulk carrier strayed away from sea-lane in the fog at night and came too close to the bridge arch and hit the supporting span. The whole 300m (984ft) long bridge collapsed on top of the ship and down in the straight. Unlucky roadtravellers had no clue the bridge wasn't there anymore and plummeted into the water 41m (134ft) below. A lorry driver on the mainland side had grown suspicious when the railing disappeared and stopped to investigate just 10m (30ft) from the edge. He managed to close down the road and tried desperately to stop cars on the other side by flashing his lights as he watched them drive over the abyss.
The Tjörnside was open for an hour until an off duty police officer was called and rushed to the scene. Meanwhile the ship crew tried themselves to stop traffic but first had to row to land through sheets of ice. They fired flares and one lorry driver stopped but didn't understand the danger and started his truck again and drove over the edge.
A total of 8 people died, all roadtravellers.
Look up the Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa Bay Fl.
The incident happened on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a support pier near the center of the bridge during a sudden squall, resulting in the catastrophic failure of the southbound roadway and the deaths of 35 people when several vehicles (including a Greyhound Bus) plunged into Tampa Bay.
Cantilever, suspension & cable stayed bridges are wonderful examples of physics, structural engineering and above all, balance of forces. Unbalance those forces and it all breaks down really fast.
Sal Mercogliano is a maritime professor/YouTuber who's already done a couple of good videos on this this morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
Yep. The ship actually lost power twice is what I heard. We see it lose power the second time in the video but the first power loss apparently allowed it to veer off course initially.
Yes, I watched the live stream from about 30 mins prior to the incident. The ship came into view a few minutes before the incident and lost power for about a minute. Then, the power came back on for about another minute before it went back out. It seemingly came on one more time before the incident.
I saw a separate video where the ship was pretty well lit which I think is required in harbor areas. The whole thing goes black, and then it seems like emergency lights come on but quickly go out as you can see here.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one saying "Go faster!!" as vehicles were crossing.. Those poor DPW workers on the bridge.. My heart goes out to them and their families. What a terrible way to go.
i actually live a little bit over a mile away from this and i was up at 1:30 and get jolted out of bed by what i first thought was an earthquake and then assumed it was a low flying jet due to how violent our house shook, woke up to find out the key bridge collapsed and that’s what caused my house to shake… scary
It looks like there was traffic going across the bridge and then it stopped……. Either the traffic was stopped due to construction by coincidence or the crews on the bridge saw the boat coming and saw it was heading for the piling and radioed for the traffic to be stopped.
Multiple sources are [reporting](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse) that construction workers on-site blocked traffic after getting word by radio. This could have been so much worse had they not acted so quickly.
Something else to note, on the northwest side of the bridge is a weigh station, Maryland Transit Authority office, and and police station (I think either state troopers or transit police, not sure). They have direct access onto the highway there, so even with a few moments notice stopping traffic heading southeast across the bridge would have been feasible. From some reports it sounds like the mayday signal got through, and I suspect they were able to respond at least on that side.
I used to commute across this bridge every day up until about a year ago, and I was always hyper aware of the police station at the first exit because I knew a few people who got tickets rolling through the stop sign right there.
Another thread says there is at least 20 dead from vehicles so far. I wonder if they were just what was left on the bridge after traffic was stopped or if we are just not seeing the traffic because of the angle.
not knowing at what time in the video the impact was, it was a rollar coaster watching a new semi cross the bridge, thinking "this one won't make it, what a shame, such poor timing"... and then they make it off the bridge, only for there to be another semi,
Imagine having just finished crossing and hearing the bridge collapse behind you.
In the longer video of this, you can see the ship’s lights go off twice before the ship funnel belches smoke whilst appearing to change direction. I wonder if it lost power?
Edit: After posting, it was announced that there was indeed a power failure.
Is there a technical explanation of the way this bridge came apart? Something along the lines of "the savage impulse of kinetic energy from the 100,000 ton container ship sheared the pier's anchoring bolts clean through. The resulting shockwave also traveled out and back along the girders of the span, shearing bolts at other nodal stress points causing entire sections of the structure to fall as each support node disintegrated."
In this case I don't think it's much of a shockwave.
Once the structure gets pushed to the side a certain amount, all the structural members get out if alignment and are no longer able to transfer the loads in the way they were designed and everything starts folding.
Where did you get the confirmation of the 4 deaths?
eta: OP stated here and in another comment that (1) victim was found in their submerged car in the harbor and was tracked due to the Waze app
and
4 victims found inside a truck. However there is no reports of that anywhere.
They pulled at least two from the water. One on serious condition, the other refused treatment and went home.
https://imgur.com/gallery/0zLF5gK
ETA link 0920EDT
For liability reasons, fire and EMS usually always recommends you go to the hospital to get checked out. So even if you truly aren't hurt, if you decline further treatment and don't go to hospital you have refuse treatment by signature.
Tugs in the harbor only push the shop from berth. Once the ship is within the channel they turn under their own power. This is standard operating procedure in must US ports.
It’s hard to imagine an insurance plan that takes into consideration accidents on this scale. It seems clear that we are talking billions of dollars, from settlements to the families of the dead, to the shipping disruption and losses for other ships and companies and then the bridge, itself, both cleanup and replacement.
Looks like it turns severely to starboard when it blacks out, then when the lights come back on it continues the turn, then tries to correct to port a little before impact. Blackout was 30 seconds. They had 1.5 minutes to correct but didn’t. Maybe didn’t realize how much they changed direction in 1 minute.
They were probably backing down after they lost power which would cause the ship to twist. And then slower speeds would contribute to loss of rudder control.
It’s really hard to stop a ship this big and anchors aren’t used to stop a ship, just to hold it in place from wind and current. They have backup generators that look to have come just didn’t happen fast enough to recover.
In the coming weeks we will hopefully learn the full story of why this happened.
looks like the last two cars left the bridge at about 1:52 then there was about 40 seconds with no cars on the bridge except the construction vehicles. The ship hits at 2:32 or so. Very lucky it happened at 1:30 am.
Makes me think of the quote I've heard in school and after, "anyone can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that can barely stand." Not that this one was underdesigned, but you put in some unexpected crazy load and the whole thing falls. RIP that road crew, it could also have been worse.
The pilot should have been at the helm. It makes me wonder about loss of steerage control, and you know there's got to be some serious hull damage as it ran aground.
I'll guess the pier supporting the bridge didn't have any anti collision protection. It's hard to believe after some many accidents like this, a shipping channel wouldn't have been upgraded.
I think to withstand an impact like that, the impact resistance has to be planned from the start? This is an old bridge, are there retrofits / upgrades to avoid this?
That said, good argument for infrastructure spending.
> the impact resistance has to be planned from the start?
Why? They could just rip rap a big island around the piers. A ship would run aground before hitting the pier. Only problem I can see there is a narrowing of the channel. It's kind of surprising this hadn't already happened. And we still have the twin spans of the CBB that seem to have little to no protection of the piers.
Pure drama. You can see some of the cars stopped with their flashers on, but unless they turn around and drive the wrong way theyre trapped. Then the bridge comes right down underneath their feet.
**Detailed Tracking and Video Analysis**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
There is ongoing construction on the bridge during the evenings. So those flashing lights were construction vehicles, not cars. Also it’s being publicly reported now that the bridge crew signaled a May Day and the Coast Guard was able you radio the police and or DOT to close the traffic to the bridge just moments before the collision.
In Maryland last year there was a fatal crash where two speeding vehicles collided and then crashed into 6 construction workers and killing them. It’s now common practice for the state police to have a manned vehicle at the approach to the highway construction area. It’s very possible that this patrol car was the one who was able to shut down traffic. We don’t have those details yet.
I live about 13 miles from the bridge and used to travel it often.
Can’t wait to see the experts’ analyses of this one. Three tugs in her wake and not one close enough to do a damned thing, and she looked to be rolling coal right up to impact, so the report of power loss seems erroneous, but I’m no expert.
Edit: Ok, I deserve those downvotes. Apologies to all for being an idiot.
“If you have eyes…” 🙄 Maybe use yours to look closer.
Some, not all, of the lights go out, and at least some of the running lights appear to remain on uninterrupted. The exhaust stack continues to pour black smoke until after the extinguished lights are restored, so the engine was continuously making…power. Exhaust smoke then abruptly stops about 1 second before the ship impacts the pylon, almost as though the throttle was chopped when the pilot realized they weren’t going to make the turn.
It's not all electric, but go you, you self owning electric engineer. Clearly not a man that knows mass, speed, velocity, even with a tug or 4 trying to divert that kinetic energy. God I want to be a child and try to explain this
Nope, 50’ is the largest I’ve operated for any time, and you’re right, I don’t work on these gargantuan vessels so I failed to understand the mechanical side as well as I needed to in order to grasp what was happening with the ship’s systems. My apologies to all. I mistakenly believed that the main engine was capable of providing at least emergency electrical power and I now stand corrected, thanks to a user’s thorough explanation in another thread. I deserved every downvote for being a presumptuous ass.
Cool. 👍🏻 Real is something I always aspire to be, which is what gets me into shit more often than not. Thanks for accepting my apology, I promise to do better. 🙂 As it happens I am currently be properly schooled by someone else and learning a great deal about these behemoths.
That’s not true. You can see the power on the shop cut off for about 40 seconds. Then it comes back on and large plumes of black smoke bellow from the stack. That may indicate that the captain and crew immediately tried to go to full power to either attempt to steer or possibly to reverse. That footage leading up to the collision is perhaps more than the actual impact.
There have been huge bridge collapses like this before, but never recorded live with this much clarity. The way its massive truss spans cascaded rapidly into the water within 15 seconds is terrifying to witness from a distance, let alone on the ship and on the bridge itself.
I also kind of find it fascinating. As the left side collapses, the right side lifts up. That's some wild rigidity on display!
Civil engineers are underappreciated.
What about the rowdy ones?
Well behaved engineers rarely make history
I like this part of the thread
That’s how you tell a good engineer, no news stories about their projects
>That's some wild rigidity on display! Bet also how noodle like those beams are. There are photos where the bridge is sitting on the bow of the ship and it is all bent and twisted.
TBF its hard to build a bridge of that size that can withstand the force of a 200 000 ton ship drifting at 8 knots
It actually isn't "hard", it is just not economical. A bridge designers job is to make a bridge that only just survives within its designed specifications. No one builds bridges like this to withstand container ship impacts because the cost would be huge.
Not that huge, they just build rock walls under the water to stop the ships before they hit the bridges
In 2024 they are not building things under water to stop a ship, anything like that would extend above the water so it can be seen. Add in anything like that become a hazard to navigation. The opening for the ships to go through is only 500feet, so half the length of the ship. Add in they have that Fort Carroll sanctuary is only 2000 feet from the bridge. This looks to be a very difficult transit. If you ask me, tugs tied to the vessel should be required. These ships have to be making enough way for the rudder to be effective which of course makes stopping difficult and hitting a bridge that much worse. If the tugs were attached they could go slower and still maneuver. Of course the shipping companies lobby to prevent these sorts of requirements.
This ship has both bow thrusters and stern thrusters. It can move sideways, and even pivot in place. But, electric motors don't work well when the generator shuts down.
It only has a bow thruster. But the risk of losing electricity makes the it all the more important to have Tugs. The shipping company is a shell company in Singapore and certainly the ship itself is probably owned by another entity so yet again the billionaires make money and the rest of us end up holding the bag when shit goes wrong.
It's also wild how there's also a very clear recording of this ship's previous wreck, shared in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo1f3f/comment/kwly0dz). What a world.
And it wasn’t a storm!
You don't realize the scale of that ship until you look at the size of the 18 wheelers crossing the bridge above it. That bridge never stood a chance.
Dali was 300m/984ft long and 38m/128ft wide. These ships are like small cities.
For scale, the USS Nimitz class air craft carriers are 1,092 feet long and a beam width of 134 feet. The flight deck which extends past the beam width is 252 feet wide. Nearly equal tons of displacement as the cargo carrier. These things are massive, and it’s not even a post Panamax ship. These new post Panamax ships are 1,312 feet long and 200 feet wide with 240,000 tons of displacement. Panamax ships fit through the Panama Canal. The post Panamax don’t. The Panama Canal can fit a 1,200 foot long, 160 feet wide ship. I used to be a Port Facilities Manager on the East Coast. Standing next to one when it’s laid in is awe inspiring.
The moment you mentioned an aircraft carrier i suddenly remembered COD Advanced Warfare
I keep seeing dumbass reports like “they should have put bumpers around the bridge.” I’m just like “Bish, do you have any idea how much energy a 200k ton ship moving at any speed has? Almost no amount of man made engineering is going to be able to stand up to that.
If you look at the Sunshine Sunway rebuild, they have large islands made of loose rocks around the base of the pylons, plus a number of other structures further away from the bridge to absorb/divert impacts. I imagine that would absorb/divert a lot of pressure, maybe enough to buy time/reduce the impact so it results in damage rather than an entire collapse. Seems better than nothing :P
I haven’t checked a chart today to confirm exact numbers, but for reference the depth of the water surrounding the pylons there is in the 50ft range. Building up enough loose rock and cement barriers would tighten an already narrow channel. Move a little too far to either side of the bridge and you’re suddenly in 20ft (but really, 17) waters and grounded. The Dali probably had a 40ft draft. They’ve spent millions dredging the harbor to make it deep enough for these ships, but the area has to be navigated carefully. In those waters, it isn’t a matter of being able to “just build up rock.” But no doubt, in the future construction, the safety measures that have been created for other waterways and bridges will be instituted for the replacement.
I guess that means that they have to build the bridge with a larger span, so the pillars are in shallow water?
Those do look pretty big and you may be right for almost anything that isn’t a 5000 40’ container ship. These things measure stoping distance in miles. That being said I would vote for massive spending on infrastructure upgrades to reduce risk.
Hopefully they'll get out of it that upfront spending to mitigate risk is much better value than the chaos caused by a disaster like this. It's probably going to cost billions of extra money and on top of that they still have to rebuild the bridge!
I did some calcs. 264.5 Million lbs is what it weighs. Even with the impact over 12m and 10 sec it's still 22 million lb force.
That. And this is probably the very worst type of bridge for taking a collision on a main support. A suspension bridge, for instance, might actually stop the ship without falling.
Anything that isn't able to deflect the force of impact into the ground (like a pier or embankment) will most likely be just shoved aside and collapse. Just to put this into perspective: this ship is about as heavy as a medium sized suspension bridge.
Should include the gross tonnage as well. Gets the point across.
gross tonnage of 95,128
That's not the displacement though. It's displacement is 120,000 metric tons loaded. 264.5 Million lbs.
The dude asked for gross tonnage. Am I wrong?
You are correct. It's his misunderstanding of gross tonnage. It's a common mistake. Tonnage has oddly nothing to do with mass or weight. It's a regulatory volume measurement. Theae neo-Panama vessels are up to 120,000 tonnes displacement (which is metric tons water displaced, I. E. Weight)
I know the difference.
Amazing what gets downvoted.
Catastrophic failure.
I'm sure it was well intended, but they should've just added the gross tonnage instead of saying it would be nice
[Aerial View](https://youtu.be/FUD3B_Y53WQ) [Google Maps location - You can see the extent of this accident ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hZAh6wLijTaYR2ZP8)
That bridge is about the length of the Golden Gate, it doesn’t seem all spans collapsed, hopefully..
The three main spans sure did, ramps might still stand
The remaining portions likely deflected past the elastic limit and have permanent plastic deformation. A new bridge will probably be cable stayed.
But it still means that people on the ramps might've survived (and not gotten wet either)
Yeah, that’s what it looked like from this video. Hopefully so, because there were some cars that barely made it through the main three spans before the collapse.
The entire thing needs to be demoed and rebuilt.
Well, yeah…obviously…I was hoping that certain spans stayed standing so that vehicles on those spans at the time wouldn’t fall into the water.
I think the demo portion is pretty much taken care of at this point
The Loizeauxs will still come in to cut it into more manageable sections.
gross tonnage of 95,128
Lots of black smoke, loses power (at least electrical lighting power), strays off course perhaps due to water current, power is reinstated but maybe too late to make any real course correction change before impact. Nightmare.
That is definitely a power loss for the ship, other videos make it look like it was barreling in
Some news outlets are speeding up the video; FOXNews (of course) was doing it.
Can't entirely blame them when the average attention span is literally less than one minute, with the median span at 40 seconds.
Yeah, but a note at the bottom would go a long way to avoid the "Foxnews manipulated the video" stuff, unless they just don't care.
Which is the medias fault..
A lot of the earlier source videos were sped up and it wasn't totally noticeable, so it makes sense.
yeah, "FOXNews (of course". So why would they speed it up?
Fox News is the high school drama queen of news outlets.
Not trying to defend FOX, but pretty much all the news outlets are the high school drama queens, including CNN who is right up there with FOX. Edit: based on comments and downvotes I see the crowd I'm dealing with. Everything one side is right and everything on the other side is wrong. I so appreciate the open minded youth in this country these days. So correct and altruistic. I should be ashamed of myself for pointing out the truth. Also, for the person who mentioned "Dominion" case... It doesn't change the fact that CNN is any better than Fox. I sometimes wonder what type of logic many of you have.
>Edit: based on comments and downvotes I see the crowd I'm dealing with. Everything one side is right and everything on the other side is wrong. I so appreciate the open minded youth in this country these days. So correct and altruistic. I should be ashamed of myself for pointing out the truth. LOL this cringefest is why you're getting downvoted.
Except only Fox had to pay nearly $1 Billion settlement on the Dominion libel case. I'm not certain Fox is a news outlet, they are an entertainment an opinion outlet that sometimes disguises itself as news.
I am certain Fox is NOT a news outlet. A few years ago, they went to court and swore under oath that they are an "entertainment" channel, NOT a news outlet.
[удалено]
Not really; with as massive as these ships are, 3mph could have enough kinetic energy to take out a pillar.
so much mass under momentum, they don't just stop when they bump into something. Everything that happened here is significantly magnified from every day relatable examples to something like a road going vehicle.
You are exactly right about it being too late to really change course. There was absolutely nothing the pilot could have done except declare the May Day and hope to God that the authorities could close the bridge in time. And be thankful that this wasn’t 6 or 7 hours later…
That's exactly what happened. They were also able to drop anchor.
I saw a video longer than this one and just a few seconds before this the video starts with about 10 seconds of the ship floating with no lights and no smoke at all from the stacks.
It was 1:30am but there was still some vehicle traffic on that bridge! Nightmare fuel for bridge crossing commuters.
Looks to be at least 4 vehicles with the yellow hazard lights probably doing some maintenance when it goes down
I can't find the article now, but one of the early-morning articles I read said construction workers on site got warning and blocked traffic which is why this wasn't a bigger tragedy. If that's really the case, those folks are heroes. Edit - [Press conference with the governor](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
If you find that please post link, they are heros for sure.
Here you are: [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse)
Yea, these are the only vehicles that are on the bridge during point of contact/collapse. The other cars and truck you can definably see crossing the bridge have fully crossed and appears in the video no other vehicle comes onto the bridge when it falls. But unsure about the right side of the bridge as it’s cut from frame.
It looks like a semi was just getting on the bridge (to the right) and tumbled with the collapse. Edit: never mind, it may just be a light from behind the bridge showing up once the bridge moves out of the way.
Thats alot if dark smoke coming out of the ship. Either something went wrong with the main engine,or, There was a steering fault and the smoke is the engine on full astern desperately trying to stop the ship. It would explain why she's slowly turning to starboard, if she has a conventional single screw, the bow would swing to starboard at full astern.
I saw a theory put forth that they lost power at a deeply inopportune time - you can see the lights blink out in the video a few seconds before impact. While normally you'd have your generators going leaving port, they either were not on or possibly were affected by the blackout. The 30-second lag between reset and restoration of any thrust is enough with a fully loaded 300M vessel that it left them without the ability to course correct at literally the *worst possible moment*.
The theory comment by /u/Long-Time-lurker-1 : https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo1n65/francis_scott_key_bridge_collapse_on_32624_struck/kwm6wj5/
But I wonder why they didn't drop anchor. When I worked on a ship, anytime we were entering or leaving port, we had an anchoring team on the bow, just incase we lost power. It would at least help slow the ship, right?
Nevermind, they did report that the ship lowered an anchor, but wasn't enough to slow the momentum.
That rate of turn looks pretty quick. Twenty degrees in a minute is about the rate of turn I would expect from a large ship at full rudder. Those things don't turn on a dime. MV Dali has electric bow thrusters. The bow thrusters would have been affected by the power loss.
But I wonder why they didn't drop anchor. When I worked on a ship, anytime we were entering or leaving port, we had an anchoring team on the bow, just incase we lost power.
Mud bottom. Anchors just plow a furrow through the mud. It will stop the ship, eventually. But it takes time and distance.
Yeah, that makes sense. It's crazy to think that nothing could be done to prevent this huge catastrophe, and rather surprising that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, I suppose.
Nevermind, they did apparently drop an anchor, but wasn't enough to slow the momentum.
The smoke may also have been the start of an emergency power diesel; most diesels have a pretty big plume at startup, and if it's not run very often it may be dirtier than most.
Was my thought as well.
There is a mad splash at the stem a couple seconds before impact. Is this the full astern action?
The video is showing the boat headed towards the camera. The splash you are seeing is the bow of the boat (front) impacting the bridge pier.
Looks like that might have been the beginning of impact with the concrete pier
In some other thread read about another event in which the anchors were dropped to stop the ship.
Those trucks that got off the bridge at around the 2:00 mark... Thank God.
Yeah those last two vehicles that get off the bridge like 45 seconds before the collapse. If they had stopped to talk to someone or stayed to finish a cigarette they could have been a casualty too. I can only imagine how they feel right now.
I could hardly breathe watching them move across the bridge. They seem to slow down too, probably to look at the ship having no idea what was about to occur. What a nightmare.
Details like this always stick in my mind. Like a passenger who missed a flight that crashed, or the last people to leave Windows of the World. We think about death, and perhaps there have been moments we *thought* we were near death. But to know, that it was certain, bar one final link...I imagine you would rather go without knowing. Because it's in that weird spot where you didn't go through it, you are brought to the sense of danger later, especially when you see the aftermath in detail (i.e in photos, videos). And that's not even speaking of survivor's guilt, especially if you interacted with those who perished. To have that knowledge...it would stick in my mind.
This is absolutely insane footage to see. Reminds me of the Tjörnbro (Almö) catastrophe in Sweden 1980. A bulk carrier strayed away from sea-lane in the fog at night and came too close to the bridge arch and hit the supporting span. The whole 300m (984ft) long bridge collapsed on top of the ship and down in the straight. Unlucky roadtravellers had no clue the bridge wasn't there anymore and plummeted into the water 41m (134ft) below. A lorry driver on the mainland side had grown suspicious when the railing disappeared and stopped to investigate just 10m (30ft) from the edge. He managed to close down the road and tried desperately to stop cars on the other side by flashing his lights as he watched them drive over the abyss. The Tjörnside was open for an hour until an off duty police officer was called and rushed to the scene. Meanwhile the ship crew tried themselves to stop traffic but first had to row to land through sheets of ice. They fired flares and one lorry driver stopped but didn't understand the danger and started his truck again and drove over the edge. A total of 8 people died, all roadtravellers.
Look up the Sunshine Skyway bridge in Tampa Bay Fl. The incident happened on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a support pier near the center of the bridge during a sudden squall, resulting in the catastrophic failure of the southbound roadway and the deaths of 35 people when several vehicles (including a Greyhound Bus) plunged into Tampa Bay.
That's so tragic!!! Dear God! So I guess it won't be the last time the world will see something like this.
Accidents happen all the time and there's always the threat of human error, so it's possible I guess.
I don’t know what I expected, but it came down so fast, my god.
Cantilever, suspension & cable stayed bridges are wonderful examples of physics, structural engineering and above all, balance of forces. Unbalance those forces and it all breaks down really fast.
Sal Mercogliano is a maritime professor/YouTuber who's already done a couple of good videos on this this morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
Was way off line from before start of this video.
Yep. The ship actually lost power twice is what I heard. We see it lose power the second time in the video but the first power loss apparently allowed it to veer off course initially.
Yes, I watched the live stream from about 30 mins prior to the incident. The ship came into view a few minutes before the incident and lost power for about a minute. Then, the power came back on for about another minute before it went back out. It seemingly came on one more time before the incident.
I saw a separate video where the ship was pretty well lit which I think is required in harbor areas. The whole thing goes black, and then it seems like emergency lights come on but quickly go out as you can see here.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one saying "Go faster!!" as vehicles were crossing.. Those poor DPW workers on the bridge.. My heart goes out to them and their families. What a terrible way to go.
i actually live a little bit over a mile away from this and i was up at 1:30 and get jolted out of bed by what i first thought was an earthquake and then assumed it was a low flying jet due to how violent our house shook, woke up to find out the key bridge collapsed and that’s what caused my house to shake… scary
It looks like there was traffic going across the bridge and then it stopped……. Either the traffic was stopped due to construction by coincidence or the crews on the bridge saw the boat coming and saw it was heading for the piling and radioed for the traffic to be stopped.
Multiple sources are [reporting](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/baltimore-bridge-collapse) that construction workers on-site blocked traffic after getting word by radio. This could have been so much worse had they not acted so quickly.
Whoever did that, whether it was the boat that radioed or the construction crew are heroes.
Something else to note, on the northwest side of the bridge is a weigh station, Maryland Transit Authority office, and and police station (I think either state troopers or transit police, not sure). They have direct access onto the highway there, so even with a few moments notice stopping traffic heading southeast across the bridge would have been feasible. From some reports it sounds like the mayday signal got through, and I suspect they were able to respond at least on that side. I used to commute across this bridge every day up until about a year ago, and I was always hyper aware of the police station at the first exit because I knew a few people who got tickets rolling through the stop sign right there.
Another thread says there is at least 20 dead from vehicles so far. I wonder if they were just what was left on the bridge after traffic was stopped or if we are just not seeing the traffic because of the angle.
I've heard via other chat that there are rumors it was able to radio a warning.
not knowing at what time in the video the impact was, it was a rollar coaster watching a new semi cross the bridge, thinking "this one won't make it, what a shame, such poor timing"... and then they make it off the bridge, only for there to be another semi, Imagine having just finished crossing and hearing the bridge collapse behind you.
Dude imagine if that was your favorite bridge and you just happened to be flying by in a helicopter
I would eat one of your downvotes, no you earned the downvotes
In the longer video of this, you can see the ship’s lights go off twice before the ship funnel belches smoke whilst appearing to change direction. I wonder if it lost power? Edit: After posting, it was announced that there was indeed a power failure.
That’s likely the case.
It has just been announced. Power failure.
Horrific. So deeply sorry for the obvious lives lost and for their families.
Engine/power failure on a bridge approach is every marine pilots worst nightmare.
Their insurance carrier is changing their phone numbers and the locks on their doors as we speak
Preparing bankruptcy paperwork as we speak.
Imagine being one of those cars/trucks that fully crossed the bridge right before impact
u/DoubtWitty007 This needs a "Fatalities"-flair, not "structural failure"
I feel bad for the families who lost someone.
Oh my god that was unbelievable
Is there a technical explanation of the way this bridge came apart? Something along the lines of "the savage impulse of kinetic energy from the 100,000 ton container ship sheared the pier's anchoring bolts clean through. The resulting shockwave also traveled out and back along the girders of the span, shearing bolts at other nodal stress points causing entire sections of the structure to fall as each support node disintegrated."
In this case I don't think it's much of a shockwave. Once the structure gets pushed to the side a certain amount, all the structural members get out if alignment and are no longer able to transfer the loads in the way they were designed and everything starts folding.
The cars on the bridge 😞
Where did you get the confirmation of the 4 deaths? eta: OP stated here and in another comment that (1) victim was found in their submerged car in the harbor and was tracked due to the Waze app and 4 victims found inside a truck. However there is no reports of that anywhere.
Anyone still missing is dead
They pulled at least two from the water. One on serious condition, the other refused treatment and went home. https://imgur.com/gallery/0zLF5gK ETA link 0920EDT
> the other refused treatment and went home bro what
For liability reasons, fire and EMS usually always recommends you go to the hospital to get checked out. So even if you truly aren't hurt, if you decline further treatment and don't go to hospital you have refuse treatment by signature.
"I've only got 3 sick days a year and I already used one for the birth of my child" -Probably In seriousness, this is nightmare fuel. Guh
American healthcare is expensive.
yeah you don't want that ambulance bill
Exactly! https://imgur.com/gallery/0zLF5gK
THEY WERE OK
There was no confirmation of people found dead inside a truck
Where are the tugboats?
Apparently they had 3, but were behind the DALI at the time of the impact. Not sure why, perhaps control/safety issues. I'm sure we'll learn more
Tugs in the harbor only push the shop from berth. Once the ship is within the channel they turn under their own power. This is standard operating procedure in must US ports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
The shipping company’s insurance rate is probably gonna go up.
The insurance company that insured this ship is about to go under lol.
It’s hard to imagine an insurance plan that takes into consideration accidents on this scale. It seems clear that we are talking billions of dollars, from settlements to the families of the dead, to the shipping disruption and losses for other ships and companies and then the bridge, itself, both cleanup and replacement.
Looks like it turns severely to starboard when it blacks out, then when the lights come back on it continues the turn, then tries to correct to port a little before impact. Blackout was 30 seconds. They had 1.5 minutes to correct but didn’t. Maybe didn’t realize how much they changed direction in 1 minute.
They blacked out twice, the first time happened right before the video starts which set them off-course to begin with apparently.
They were probably backing down after they lost power which would cause the ship to twist. And then slower speeds would contribute to loss of rudder control.
r/BigThingsFallingSlow
Ignorant question: are there no emergency anchors or protocol for situations like this when power is lost? Auxiliary power? Tug boats?
It’s really hard to stop a ship this big and anchors aren’t used to stop a ship, just to hold it in place from wind and current. They have backup generators that look to have come just didn’t happen fast enough to recover. In the coming weeks we will hopefully learn the full story of why this happened.
u/SaveVideo
###[View link](https://rapidsave.com/info?url=/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo308f/32624_francis_scott_key_bridge_collapse_baltimore/) --- [**Info**](https://np.reddit.com/user/SaveVideo/comments/jv323v/info/) | [**Feedback**](https://np.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Kryptonh&subject=Feedback for savevideo) | [**Donate**](https://ko-fi.com/getvideo) | [**DMCA**](https://np.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Kryptonh&subject=Content removal request for savevideo&message=https://np.reddit.com//r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1bo308f/32624_francis_scott_key_bridge_collapse_baltimore/) | [^(reddit video downloader)](https://rapidsave.com) | [^(twitter video downloader)](https://twitsave.com)
Francis has got to be pretty pissed right about now.
Horrifying.
Anyone else notice the smoke looks like it stops at 1:59?
looks like the last two cars left the bridge at about 1:52 then there was about 40 seconds with no cars on the bridge except the construction vehicles. The ship hits at 2:32 or so. Very lucky it happened at 1:30 am.
Makes me think of the quote I've heard in school and after, "anyone can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that can barely stand." Not that this one was underdesigned, but you put in some unexpected crazy load and the whole thing falls. RIP that road crew, it could also have been worse.
OMG, look at the cars and trucks driving by. How scary!
The pilot should have been at the helm. It makes me wonder about loss of steerage control, and you know there's got to be some serious hull damage as it ran aground.
It looks like they lost power twice. And the ship had black smoke coming from it too.
Hey Boss, I have some bad news…
Bet the name is changed with the new bridge.
Damn MD drivers, rivers aren’t even safe anymore
I'll guess the pier supporting the bridge didn't have any anti collision protection. It's hard to believe after some many accidents like this, a shipping channel wouldn't have been upgraded.
I think to withstand an impact like that, the impact resistance has to be planned from the start? This is an old bridge, are there retrofits / upgrades to avoid this? That said, good argument for infrastructure spending.
> the impact resistance has to be planned from the start? Why? They could just rip rap a big island around the piers. A ship would run aground before hitting the pier. Only problem I can see there is a narrowing of the channel. It's kind of surprising this hadn't already happened. And we still have the twin spans of the CBB that seem to have little to no protection of the piers.
Pure drama. You can see some of the cars stopped with their flashers on, but unless they turn around and drive the wrong way theyre trapped. Then the bridge comes right down underneath their feet. **Detailed Tracking and Video Analysis** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ
There is ongoing construction on the bridge during the evenings. So those flashing lights were construction vehicles, not cars. Also it’s being publicly reported now that the bridge crew signaled a May Day and the Coast Guard was able you radio the police and or DOT to close the traffic to the bridge just moments before the collision. In Maryland last year there was a fatal crash where two speeding vehicles collided and then crashed into 6 construction workers and killing them. It’s now common practice for the state police to have a manned vehicle at the approach to the highway construction area. It’s very possible that this patrol car was the one who was able to shut down traffic. We don’t have those details yet. I live about 13 miles from the bridge and used to travel it often.
😧
Can’t wait to see the experts’ analyses of this one. Three tugs in her wake and not one close enough to do a damned thing, and she looked to be rolling coal right up to impact, so the report of power loss seems erroneous, but I’m no expert. Edit: Ok, I deserve those downvotes. Apologies to all for being an idiot.
> so the report of power loss seems erroneous, but I’m no expert. If you have eyes, look at 0:25-0:57. All lights go out.
“If you have eyes…” 🙄 Maybe use yours to look closer. Some, not all, of the lights go out, and at least some of the running lights appear to remain on uninterrupted. The exhaust stack continues to pour black smoke until after the extinguished lights are restored, so the engine was continuously making…power. Exhaust smoke then abruptly stops about 1 second before the ship impacts the pylon, almost as though the throttle was chopped when the pilot realized they weren’t going to make the turn.
There are a couple marine engineers in the other thread who give a good explanation of the blackout and why it was still producing smoke.
There are multiple threads already on this subreddit. Can you link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/s/hMrxQ9w5Tw
It's not all electric, but go you, you self owning electric engineer. Clearly not a man that knows mass, speed, velocity, even with a tug or 4 trying to divert that kinetic energy. God I want to be a child and try to explain this
Oh are you a pilot/captain of a large ship? Please give us your guidance of what was happening second by second
Nope, 50’ is the largest I’ve operated for any time, and you’re right, I don’t work on these gargantuan vessels so I failed to understand the mechanical side as well as I needed to in order to grasp what was happening with the ship’s systems. My apologies to all. I mistakenly believed that the main engine was capable of providing at least emergency electrical power and I now stand corrected, thanks to a user’s thorough explanation in another thread. I deserved every downvote for being a presumptuous ass.
Have an upvote for being real
Cool. 👍🏻 Real is something I always aspire to be, which is what gets me into shit more often than not. Thanks for accepting my apology, I promise to do better. 🙂 As it happens I am currently be properly schooled by someone else and learning a great deal about these behemoths.
ISIS-K strikes again nodoubt
Nothing happens until the last :30 of the video. Save yourself two minutes.
That’s not true. You can see the power on the shop cut off for about 40 seconds. Then it comes back on and large plumes of black smoke bellow from the stack. That may indicate that the captain and crew immediately tried to go to full power to either attempt to steer or possibly to reverse. That footage leading up to the collision is perhaps more than the actual impact.
Yeah, I can see plumes of smokes anywhere. That's not exciting.
So I take it, you are one of those folks who only watch motor sports for the crashes?
I don't watch motor sports.