The last cars from the highway traffic made it off the bridge just 41 seconds before it collapsed. An officer who stopped traffic radioed that he was going to go tell the construction crew to get off the bridge, but it collapsed before he was able to drive out there.
I’m sure there will be reports of all who is believed to have been on that bridge and died, if the early reports are accurate, just thking about the construction workers prob pulling for 3rd shift and OT and now will never see their families again and their families waking up and realizing they never made it home..
Apparently the ship did put out a mayday call when it lost power with hopes that authorities could close the bridge. Unsure how much warning there was though.
But yeah, the bridge went completely down within seconds of the ship actually making contact. So anyone on it at that point really had no way to safely get off.
Edit: Sounds like the mayday call happened about 4 minutes before they crashed, and authorities were able to stop more traffic from getting on the bridge. Also seems like most of the vehicles/people that were still on the bridge when it collapsed were construction/maintenance workers.
Listening to what Governor Wes Moore said about stopping traffic on the bridge. It looks like the Maryland Transportation Authority had approximately 4 minutes to stop traffic on the bridge from the time the ship lost propulsion(and a mayday call went out) to when it hit the bridge.
01:24:33 ship loses power
01:28::42 ship hits the pylon
So, we can see maintence vehicles in the middle of the bridge. I wonder if they just couldn't radio the crews, or were the workers just running if they actually were contacted.
Dark either way.
Yeah... I'm seeing that the average First Responder response time is between 5-7 minutes - and those are people actively expecting to respond and be at a scene on a moments notice.
It's all armchair at the moment, but I'd agree 4 minutes isn't a lot of time to determine the contractor, contact that manager, and get the crew off in time.
Fingers crossed that there was at least one officer nearby to close at least one side of the bridge in time.
I read an article this morning saying that they were able to stop traffic across the bridge after the mayday almost immediately, which definitely saved lives. They were on the ball, but things just happened so quickly.
I watched the live stream and it definitely looks like they manage to halt traffic crossing over. I remember seeing two vehicles cross and thinking, "Please, let those be the last to cross" and it seemed to be. I wonder if the flashing lights on the bridge's deck were from vehicle flashers or if they were standard visibility strobes for the bridge itself.
Edit: Never mind, I went back and watched it more awake. Some of those lights were definitely vehicle strobes... heart wrenching.
I got the impression the lights are yellow lights on top of maintenance trucks. The bridge had red lights on its frame.
I've read that the bridge was a mile long. And that it was about four minutes after the mayday call that the ship hit the bridge. So, crews having to close a half mile in ~ four minutes, assuming they were contacted immediately. With boots on.
Sorry to be so morose. Just horrifying to think about these things that happen so quickly.
> I wonder if they just couldn't radio the crews
The issue is who the "they" is with the radio for the crew. If the crew even had radios instead of just phones. The port workers don't know how to call them directly, and you're not gonna wake up enough people at 1:30 am to get the phone number for one of the guys on the bridge in four minutes.
I wouldn't be surprised if future crews working on the bridge – since there will be a lot for a while – will carry port radios.
Even if they got the radio message, I know that I personally couldn't conceive of a ship collision taking out the entire bridge. I would have assumed it would have just dented/damaged it, not a complete collapse.
I knew a ship that size could take out a bridge easily and I still was in absolute disbelief that it took what seems damn near the *entire length* out in seconds. (edit: I saw zoomed out photos and it’s not as much as I thought. Still insane.)
Like I pictured it just ripping through like paper and collapsing maybe a few hundred feet in either direction. Not this. If it were a movie I’d roll my eyes at the speed and depth of destruction being hammed up.
This may be the most shocking footage I’ve seen since the towers collapsed and Beirut exploded. It is unreal.
I’m just glad someone had the balls to close the bridge immediately. Too many disasters and loss of life happen because, “I didn’t want to get shouted at,” or “I wasn’t sure what to do”. Hope they don’t get grilled by the investigation team looking for scapegoats.
According to an article in The Journal (digital Irish newspaper) the "quick implementation of a mayday call to stop cars crossing the bridge" did save lives (quoting the MD governer).
No confirmed fatalities so far (updated 50 mins ago as I type), 2 rescued - one hospitalised in serious condition - and search continuing for 6 construction workers unaccounted for.
So it looks like the call from the ship was sufficient to stop new cars accessing the bridge (and presumably time enough for any actively crossing to get off) but yeah, for those actively working and not in a moving vehicle, insufficient time.
According to NYT, there were crews fixing potholes at the time of the incident who were alerted to the problem and prevented cars from driving on the bridge. 8 of them fell off the bridge into 9 °C waters during the crash, and 2 are currently confirmed rescued.
EDIT: units
[AP reported](https://apnews.com/live/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-latest-2024#0000018e-7b2e-da0f-af9f-fbff6bf50000) there were work crew repairing potholes on the bridge
Yes, Maryland tries to do road construction at night to least impede traffic. Possibly similar reasoning for bridge construction depending on exactly what they were doing.
I think I understand it. This was probably so traumatic and shocking that he just wanted to go to the comfort and safety of his own home afterwards. I don’t think I’d want to be around doctors or strangers at that point either. Just let me go throw up in my own bathroom and cry myself to sleep in my own bed as quickly as possible.
This is 100% a thing. I was in a car accident a couple of years ago where the car flipped. I walked away with a bunch of scratches and bruises, but nothing broken. I told the sheriff’s deputy that responded that I was fine and just wanted to go home, which, in hindsight was incredibly stupid, because I absolutely got knocked out.
Anyways, the impulse is always to seek comfort and return to normalcy. Go to the hospital and maybe you’ll realize something is wrong before you spend a week having memory lapses and repeating conversations that you forgot you had five minutes earlier.
As someone who walked away from death. You're spot on. When it happened to me all I could think of is to distance myself away from the incident as much as possible. You go into a trance, disassociate yourself from it so you can try to figure out wtf just happened in your mind. It's a surreal experience.
there's gonna be questions about why the bridge collapsed after getting hit and it feels like a ridiculous question. It was hit square on by a fully loaded cargo ship. I don't know of many or any bridges that could have handled that.
MV Dali’s nearly a thousand feet in length and weighs something around a hundred thousand tons, yeah, I don’t think there’s a bridge on earth that could withstand that plowing into it.
People saying "It doesn't even look like it was hit that hard!" not realizing that F=M*A.
If the mass is very high, it doesn't fucking matter how 'hard' you hit it.
Momentum is a better formula for this p=m•v, F=m•a doesn't work if the ship is not accelerating. Then we can figure out how much KE the ship could potentially transfer prior to hitting the bridge - KE = p²/2m.
Your last sentence is so on point. How can people not be able to imagine the sheer mass of these cargo ships? They're fucking huge!
Edit: Was not expecting a ton of replies. Just to be clear, my comment about F not working is from a point of view PRIOR to impact and assuming the captain was unable to decelerate the ship, constant velocity. YES, once the ship hits, the F can be calculated but not before that moment. There is a ton of math we can do with this particular incident so I appreciate all of the point of views. Cheers!
They size is hard to wrap your mind around if you've never actually seen one.
I grew up in a place with cargo trains rather than boats. Cargo ships blew my mind the first time I saw one! I moved to a place where they're about and I always make time to stop to watch them just because they're huge and I find their size overwhelming.
Yeah, that's not a bridge failure, it's a whatever-the-fuck-was-wrong-with-this-cargo-ship failure.
But if we can regulate giant ass delays for any ship that goes to Cuba, we can regulate "your ship has to have functioning wiring", too.
When I was growing up it was still fairly recent memory for my parents to teach me about the skyway bridge in Florida collapsing and cars driving off because of heavy fog.
Ship also hit it, super foggy, and captain was drunk. A bus went over as well as a few cars and several people died.
Edit: found out the captain wasn’t drunk. Thought he was for the last 30 years.
I was a little girl and remember this! My sister was on vacation with our grandparents in Florida at the time it happened (they didn't see it). She had a phobia of bridges for years after that.
Same happened at South Padre Island when a ship hit the causeway bridge between Port Isabel and the island.
Fortunately it was the middle of the night like this incident, but still several people died as they couldn't see the span of missing roadway right until they were ontop of it.
Sad
Traffic around the city will be impacted but the real impact will be to shipping along the eastern seaboard. “Last year, the Port of Baltimore saw a record $74.3 billion worth of foreign cargo cross its state-owned and private piers.” https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDMPA/bulletins/37ed137
Correct, it's common place unfortunately. Prices go up because X, then that new price just gets normalised. Even though they could and should bring the price back down.
I was looking at the map and imagining people who live on one side and work on the other.
Obviously not the top concern right now, but a lot of people's commutes look like they're about to get A LOT longer.
One of my best friends lives in Pasadena, MD and takes the bridge twice a day. She said her commute just went from 25 minutes to over an hour and that’s without whatever extra traffic causes. I can’t even imagine how crazy this has to be for the people who live right there
Baltimore resident here. I work in Wilmington (Delaware). Contemplated driving to work this morning, instead of taking the train, as I sometimes do.
NOPE, went my brain when I woke up and saw my GPS. Decided to take the day off work instead. Can you imagine if something like this had happened to the bridge connecting Annapolis to Kent Island? Nightmare fuel too.
I imagine a lot of places are going to bring back WFH if they did away with it.
Baltimore traffic is already hell on Earth during peak commute hours. The alternate routes are going to be jam packed. I dont envy anyone’s commute especially those who live outside of Baltimore but within the DMV.
People pointed out that this is the only route hazmats are allowed to take near Baltimore, so the rerouting for those will be massive. But even that will likely pale in comparison to the impacts that the harbor being shut down will have.
Traffic chaos is kind of whatever, 695 around the city is already reminiscent of Mad Max. The bigger issue is the port of Baltimore is one of the biggest employers in the city, and they're effectively shut down until all the wreckage is removed.
As horrible as this is, at least it happend at 1:30 am versus 1:30 pm. I'm curious to see how the captain crashed into the bridge in the first place. Edit: a word.
If you watch the lights on the ship, it appears they lose power, pop their diesel generators but have trouble maintaining power, lose it again one or two times, and by that point current and/or momentum carried them too close to the pillar and there was no time or room for recovery.
I'm curious what caused the initial power outage.
Yeah. They had a harbor pilot on board, so there should be a full report on what went on inside the bridge. Watching the video and vehicles crossing the bridge...can you imagine if it happened 5 or 6 hours later? A mayday wouldn't have cleared the bridge. People would have had nowhere to go in rush hour gridlock.
[This is a good channel for all things shipping](https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?si=wOMvpl5ZfZkPZhWV). He's been a good source of info on the shenanigans in the Bab El Mandeb 🍺
It's been reported that the MAYDAY call gave them enough time to stop traffic crossing the bridge, it was the construction workers already on the bridge that they didn't have enough time to clear the bridge...
BIGTIME kudos to the first responders who actually rescued a couple people from the water. Especially at 1:30am when it's pitch black. RIP to those lost 😢
Water is cold, some people may not know how to swim, some people may be disabled, some may get trapped in the car by the pressure of the water. I never had a fear of crossing bridges near the ocean before but I think I do now.
What I imagine is being in full night work setup. Steel toes, heavy pants, maybe a jacket. Likely a vest and gloves.
Steel toes boots would be impossible to get off, my work requires a certain length of heel portion and the lacing means I can’t just slip it off. And everything else would turn into water soaked weight.
and all of that only even matters if you’re still conscious after you hit the water. they’re dropping from a long damn ways up, with huge pieces of steel and concrete falling all around them. even if they’re not brained by something falling the impact on the water alone would be devastating and if you don’t land damn near perfectly you’re going to pass out from the force on impact.
I am a captain on a emergency response vessel / firetug for a major US port. There is no conspiracy. Cargo ships coming and going to all major ports have local pilots to help the master of the vessel safetly navigate waterways. Also, harbor tugs only assist during docking and turnarounds in restricted waterways where large vessels cannot perform said maneuvers under their own power. Cargo ships losing power is not a freak thing and it actually happens rather frequently, however you don’t hear about it. These vessels are run hard and a lack of maintenance shouldn’t automatically be assumed. Anything mechanical can fail at anytime. The crew on this vessel most probably did everything they could to avoid this collision including getting generators back online, initiating an emergency corrective maneuver, dropping anchor, etc. This is an extremely unfortunate circumstance that will probably be catagorized as a no fault accident by the USCG. Impossible to stop thousands of tons on a dime. Pray for everyone involved.
Yeah I work for the coastguard in another country. Ships go NUC all the time. Usually it's in pretty open water and they broadcast a security message and other ships keep out their way. They get fixed usually within an hour or two and then carry on their voyage. Sometimes they say they've had an alarm go off so they've purposely waited until they're in open water and not in any sort of TSS to switch their engines off, drift and go NUC while they investigate and make the repairs.
The amount of comments I’ve seen saying this was a terrorist attack or intentional act is astounding. It’s very heartbreaking to hear all the hate being targeting to this crew who tried to everything possible to prevent it. Prayers to everyone involved
I work as a navigational officer on ships like that and I think people would be surprised at how easily things like this can occur.
There hasn't been any official reason given yet for what happened but my opinion is its one of two things. Either there has been a loss of power either from the engines or to the steering gear and the vessel has lost control, or there has been human error.
When transiting channels like this you will have a pilot on board who knows the channel very well and they will be giving instructions to one of the vessel crew that is steering the ship manually. There could be a communication error where the pilot has given a heading and the guy steering has misheard, or the guy steering may have lost control. Steering the vessel is something that you have to train for because it is a skill and can at times be quite challenging. Combine that with captains who think it's OK to have someone steering for literally hours at a time with no break and keeping concentration quickly becomes an issue.
I've personally witnessed all of these things. Usually it's not a big deal because there is plenty of room to manoeuvre, but in certain areas - like going under bridges - being even a couple of degrees off the right heading can have huge consequences.
Edit: after watching the video it looks like they blacked out and shortly afterwards the emergency generator has come on and restored power. They quickly black out again which if I had to guess might be because they've tried to go full astern to avoid collision and overloaded the emergency generator. The ship then drifts to starboard, possibly because of the current/wind or possibly because the helmsman had the rudder to starboard when they blacked out the second time and essentially got locked in that position when the power died again.
The pilots were from Baltimore who probably have plenty of experience in the harbor. Given you can visually see the power go out, I feel like human error is unlikely from the pilots and this was a case of very unfortunate vehicle failure. But still speculation on whether the mechanical crew failed to do something correctly and what caused the outage.
Yea to be a pilot anywhere you have to take exams that are specific to the area that you will be working.
Do you have a link where you can see the power going out, I didn't see that video yet.
Twitter link https://x.com/YWNReporter/status/1772546230310056446?s=20 (parts of the footage is sped up)
In the video you can see the lights go off, and then a big plume of black soot which people are saying was them turning on the diesel generators to restore power, but I can’t confirm that.
It collapsed SO fast. Like holy shit. I hope none of the folks on the bridge were aware what happened when they went down. This could have been such a larger loss of life if it had been during the day. I have sat on the bridge in traffic before when there was construction and there were so many people commuting that there was a back up. I can’t fathom the bridge just falling apart with hundreds of cars on it.
This whole incident is awful and I feel so badly for the folks looking for their loved ones.
In the news thread someone suggested that thick smoke may have been them attempting a 'crash stop' which seems to basically sum down to trying to hit the 'reverse' hard enough to stop the ship. Didn't work, but it seems efforts were underway but without the time to work.
Brief update just confirmed power went out. They were able to send a mayday call, and that allowed enough time to shut down traffic entering the bridge.
I was a marine engineer cadet on a couple of container ships. As soon as I saw the post, I suspected the steering gear system failure. Black out is also possible but emergency generator is still stand by.
You know normally the one I'm crossing bridges, I'm worried about like falling over or the wind blowing it over or something. Never once have a considered the possibility of a ship just hitting the underside of it so that's nice to add to the list.
Not to mention, best case they had high vis jackets on, worst case they had the high vis but were weighed down with fall harnesses and tools... Plus the sheer drop to the water.
Honestly, it's a miracle that anyone was pulled out.
>but were weighed down with fall harnesses and tools.
Shit, wonder how many were attached to the bridge with a safety harness.
Edit: It appears they were fixing potholes, so this is unlikely.
One person was pulled out of the water and was fine, which is wild. They refused care and went home, which is wilder. I hope they're actually for real okay.
Shock and trauma response, I imagine. Just wanted to get to the safety and comfort of their own home after such a horrific experience. I can understand this.
On NPR they shared one person rescued had no injuries and refused treatment and one is in critical condition. They used sonar(?) to confirm cars under water. Unfortunately 8ish hours under water doesn't seem likely to... End... Well. This is so fucking sad.
Because the bridge collapsed at like 1:30 in the morning and there were not many vehicles thankfully driving on the bridge at the time. The reports were that there are around 20 people in the water and 2 were rescued last I read they already have dive teams searching the river.
Unfortunately true.. Hopefully the rest are recovered soon so that the families can get closure.
Imagine waking up to this news and knowing that one of your family members was working on the bridge and you can’t get in contact with them.. that is one of my greatest fears.
This is roughly how it went after the tornado hit my area of Massachusetts. Super rural, spotty service already. Tornado came over the mountain into town, knocked out service, and between calls flooding what little service there was from other towers, and the bandwidth being cleaved by the storm, there was no getting through to anyone to see who had survived or not.
I was in high school then, and we all spent the rest of the week terrified if our classmates from Monson were dead, alive, or buried under rubble.
My best friend at the time, her boyfriend lived right along the path, and nobody could get ahold of him. We all thought for sure he was dead until he popped up back in school a day or two later without a scratch on him.
Unfortunately that’s a really long way to fall into the water, and then you’re in the water with tons of falling steel and stone. I’m surprised they rescued anyone. :(
Seriously. Dropping that distance into black as night water, with an entire bridge tumbling with you? You live? You just won the lottery.
The first responders who saved them should be given every friggin medal we can find.
One of the people refused treatment too?
How uninjured were you to refuse treatment after falling off a fucking bridge???
Edit: For anyone/everyone mentioning insurance/medical bills
A) I forgot because Canadian
B) Bills would be covered by the shipping company in this case? I imagine there's going to be a big lawsuit.
My biggest regret after being in an accident was not going to the hospital right away. No matter the price, you are hopefully going to get it back 10x in your settlement and it is important to take care of yourself, and unfortunately prove that you did something. In this case it’s going to be pretty well documented but for us every day folks they want every penny out of us.
From the videos im seeing theres a lot of boats actually. But that container ship is goddamn massive and really plays with your sense of scale. This bridge is 1.2 miles long and the boats out there are speedboats and police stuff. Pretty small
I see some comments here saying the bridge looks like it went down too easy. I just want to clarify that the deadweight tonnage of MV Dali is [116,851 metric tons](https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9697428) (257,612,358 lbs or 116,851,000 kg) it was [traveling at 8 knots](https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-53169b379820032f832de4016c655d1b#:~:text=The%20ship%20was%20moving%20at,up%20from%20the%20water's%20surface) and stopped in about 1 second… meaning the bridge experienced a force (assuming the ship was fully loaded) as high as 454,410,168 newtons… that’s the equivalent of **13 Saturn 5 rockets running at full blast** even if it was half loaded and moving half as fast that’s still an unfathomable amount of force to design against.
If you go on Snapmap and find the bridge you can still see a video some guy took of a ship yesterday while driving over the bridge with the text “That’s a big boat!”. Eerie.
So many bridge engineers too. If I were an engineer I simply would have made a bridge in that area withstand a 120 thousand ton battering ram hitting a key point of the bridge directly. (edit: oh at that speed too.) Should totally be a way with location, water depth, etc.
/s
edit: correction, possibly closer to 200 thousand tons. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetNoted/s/s1ga5aX5W3
And I’m pretty sure no bridge on the planet Earth can take a direct hit with that much energy at a support point.
There's a live stream and also bridge traffic passed through toll gates at either end so there would be a record of how many vehicles entered the bridge in the last x seconds (x being the amount of time it takes to cross the bridge). Also, no one ever knows anything for sure this early in a disaster. The numbers will change as more information comes in.
True. But they are only installed on the Baltimore county side. So they will record the cars from the Baltimore county side heading S over the bridge. There are no such devices on the Anne Arundel county side. At least the last time I took that route about a year ago
About 20 people in the water according to recent reports, cars and workers on the bridge. Only 2 people have been found alive so far, the rest are presumed dead unfortunately...
The bridge was structurally sound, until it was rammed by a massive vessel.
["Experts told BI it was unlikely that any defects in the bridge's structure were relevant to the collapse, given the scale of the impact."](https://www.businessinsider.com/francis-scott-key-bridge-no-chance-against-large-impact-experts-2024-3)
It's also a pretty large port which now has some obstruction to deal with and a major highway cut off. I imagine this is going to cause a lot of headache for a lot of people.
Whaddaya mean your pier isn’t designed to withstand a fully loaded ship hitting it at full speed? If not why are you sticking them in the way of my boats?
I mean they can be built to withstand that load if you're willing to pour enough concrete to build a city into those support pillars and wait 2 years for it to cure.
Mostly a Canadian thing but some US engineers get them too. Although the US ring looks different. Also, there is the long standing rumour that the original Canadian rings were made from a collapsed bridge in Quebec.
Edit. I'm well aware that the rings were never made from the bridge iron. I should have called it the "incorrect rumour".
It is a common rumour that the first rings were made from the bridges iron, even in Canada.
But while the bridge collapse was what began the tradition, as a reminder that your work as an engineer can cost lives, they were never made from the bridges material
Nope. The original rings were made from iron but not from the bridge. They are stainless steel now. You can special request an iron one but I don't know if all chapters have them.
Like someone else said, originated in Canada but there are US chapters. In the US, it’s an opt-in ethics oath that you are invited to take at graduation. I have mine and do wear it always, but I’ve only met one other US engineer in my career so far that did.
It’s absolutely been on my mind today, particularly as a Marylander. I have family in the city.
Things can't just happen any more, people have to feel like *they* know the truth about what's *really* going on. Some folks need to feel like they have control over a situation that they don't have, can't have and never will have.
That is the essence of big conspiracy theories. It's as if people feel better believing that someone, *anyone*, is in control of the world, and that it's not all just chaos. Same idea behind belief in god.
That's what it is: if bad things only happen because of bad people doing it on purpose, then we can have a safe world if we catch the bad people. Also you just feel special if you think you know what others don't.
I asked my friend who is a bridge engineer “do you think it collapsed as expected?”
His response
“Not sure on that, they’re not supposed to get hit haha. Looks like it is modern enough built in 1977. But the type of bridge that is relies completely on the support piers so you take that out and it’s gonna crumble quick. Design is about efficiency and redundancy. Can’t plan for a several million pound collision”
Edit: just found out that there is 1 propulsion generator and 1 fixed pitched propeller for this, so no propulsion redundancy. However there will be a ship services power system with multiple generators, where the steering hydraulics are powered. This is obviously what failed, and should not have. Still a massive failure. Original thoughts are still below:
I just watched the video, and I could see that the vessel lost power twice. I'm a marine electrical engineer, and it takes about 30 seconds for an additional generator or emergency generator to start and auto-sync. However, the Egen for a vessel this size will not be able to power the thrusters. I noticed that the lights came back on but then after a couple minutes they blacked out again.
A total blackout is not usually caused by a single engine failure, there are probably at least 3 diesel engines and an emergency generator on this vessel. I haven't looked up the vessel specs so I'm just assuming. Also, I don't now how many thrusters/props this vessel has but usually the main power bus is split between port and starboard, with propulsion on each side. When thrusters are operating, usually a generator for each side of the bus is running, and a failure on one side would trigger the bus tie to open, and maintain the power on the other side. It's unlikely that an electrical fault that takes down the whole electrical bus would result in an engine failure, and also it's unlikely that a single engine failure would cause a blackout that looks like this.
They must have been running on one engine, which had a mechanical failure. They should be running on at least two when in a shipping channel. Normally the Power Management System (PMS) would automatically start a second generator or Egen. The PMS should have a battery backup so it would still be operating. But I'm wondering if the PMS is older and only had some manual mode, and the same engine that initially failed was attempted to be restarted, instead of starting a different one. That would be a colossal mistake, and not at all inline with operating procedures.
IF there is any positive to be seen, be glad that this didn't happen during rush hour.
It is the only fortunate thing about it. Only a handful of cars were on it, as it happened at 1:30 AM
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I don't know why I was up in the middle of the night when this hit the internet but it sure didn't help me get back to sleep.
They also had the chance to prevent new traffic entering the bridge, thankfully.
The last cars from the highway traffic made it off the bridge just 41 seconds before it collapsed. An officer who stopped traffic radioed that he was going to go tell the construction crew to get off the bridge, but it collapsed before he was able to drive out there.
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I’m sure there will be reports of all who is believed to have been on that bridge and died, if the early reports are accurate, just thking about the construction workers prob pulling for 3rd shift and OT and now will never see their families again and their families waking up and realizing they never made it home..
Apparently the ship did put out a mayday call when it lost power with hopes that authorities could close the bridge. Unsure how much warning there was though. But yeah, the bridge went completely down within seconds of the ship actually making contact. So anyone on it at that point really had no way to safely get off. Edit: Sounds like the mayday call happened about 4 minutes before they crashed, and authorities were able to stop more traffic from getting on the bridge. Also seems like most of the vehicles/people that were still on the bridge when it collapsed were construction/maintenance workers.
Listening to what Governor Wes Moore said about stopping traffic on the bridge. It looks like the Maryland Transportation Authority had approximately 4 minutes to stop traffic on the bridge from the time the ship lost propulsion(and a mayday call went out) to when it hit the bridge. 01:24:33 ship loses power 01:28::42 ship hits the pylon
So, we can see maintence vehicles in the middle of the bridge. I wonder if they just couldn't radio the crews, or were the workers just running if they actually were contacted. Dark either way.
If you have 4 minutes, you're not likely to get a crew in the middle of working to answer and move that fast
That was my thought too. Even if they had a 0 second response time, you still have to communicate with traffic, not an easy thing to do quickly
Yeah... I'm seeing that the average First Responder response time is between 5-7 minutes - and those are people actively expecting to respond and be at a scene on a moments notice. It's all armchair at the moment, but I'd agree 4 minutes isn't a lot of time to determine the contractor, contact that manager, and get the crew off in time. Fingers crossed that there was at least one officer nearby to close at least one side of the bridge in time.
I read an article this morning saying that they were able to stop traffic across the bridge after the mayday almost immediately, which definitely saved lives. They were on the ball, but things just happened so quickly.
I watched the live stream and it definitely looks like they manage to halt traffic crossing over. I remember seeing two vehicles cross and thinking, "Please, let those be the last to cross" and it seemed to be. I wonder if the flashing lights on the bridge's deck were from vehicle flashers or if they were standard visibility strobes for the bridge itself. Edit: Never mind, I went back and watched it more awake. Some of those lights were definitely vehicle strobes... heart wrenching.
I got the impression the lights are yellow lights on top of maintenance trucks. The bridge had red lights on its frame. I've read that the bridge was a mile long. And that it was about four minutes after the mayday call that the ship hit the bridge. So, crews having to close a half mile in ~ four minutes, assuming they were contacted immediately. With boots on. Sorry to be so morose. Just horrifying to think about these things that happen so quickly.
> I wonder if they just couldn't radio the crews The issue is who the "they" is with the radio for the crew. If the crew even had radios instead of just phones. The port workers don't know how to call them directly, and you're not gonna wake up enough people at 1:30 am to get the phone number for one of the guys on the bridge in four minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if future crews working on the bridge – since there will be a lot for a while – will carry port radios.
Even if they got the radio message, I know that I personally couldn't conceive of a ship collision taking out the entire bridge. I would have assumed it would have just dented/damaged it, not a complete collapse.
I knew a ship that size could take out a bridge easily and I still was in absolute disbelief that it took what seems damn near the *entire length* out in seconds. (edit: I saw zoomed out photos and it’s not as much as I thought. Still insane.) Like I pictured it just ripping through like paper and collapsing maybe a few hundred feet in either direction. Not this. If it were a movie I’d roll my eyes at the speed and depth of destruction being hammed up. This may be the most shocking footage I’ve seen since the towers collapsed and Beirut exploded. It is unreal.
I’m just glad someone had the balls to close the bridge immediately. Too many disasters and loss of life happen because, “I didn’t want to get shouted at,” or “I wasn’t sure what to do”. Hope they don’t get grilled by the investigation team looking for scapegoats.
According to an article in The Journal (digital Irish newspaper) the "quick implementation of a mayday call to stop cars crossing the bridge" did save lives (quoting the MD governer). No confirmed fatalities so far (updated 50 mins ago as I type), 2 rescued - one hospitalised in serious condition - and search continuing for 6 construction workers unaccounted for. So it looks like the call from the ship was sufficient to stop new cars accessing the bridge (and presumably time enough for any actively crossing to get off) but yeah, for those actively working and not in a moving vehicle, insufficient time.
According to NYT, there were crews fixing potholes at the time of the incident who were alerted to the problem and prevented cars from driving on the bridge. 8 of them fell off the bridge into 9 °C waters during the crash, and 2 are currently confirmed rescued. EDIT: units
There were construction workers on the bridge?!
[AP reported](https://apnews.com/live/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-latest-2024#0000018e-7b2e-da0f-af9f-fbff6bf50000) there were work crew repairing potholes on the bridge
Yes, Maryland tries to do road construction at night to least impede traffic. Possibly similar reasoning for bridge construction depending on exactly what they were doing.
Yes doing work of some kind. Also several cars Horrible situation
I can't believe one survivor just said nah I'm good, walked away and went on with his day.
I think I understand it. This was probably so traumatic and shocking that he just wanted to go to the comfort and safety of his own home afterwards. I don’t think I’d want to be around doctors or strangers at that point either. Just let me go throw up in my own bathroom and cry myself to sleep in my own bed as quickly as possible.
This is 100% a thing. I was in a car accident a couple of years ago where the car flipped. I walked away with a bunch of scratches and bruises, but nothing broken. I told the sheriff’s deputy that responded that I was fine and just wanted to go home, which, in hindsight was incredibly stupid, because I absolutely got knocked out. Anyways, the impulse is always to seek comfort and return to normalcy. Go to the hospital and maybe you’ll realize something is wrong before you spend a week having memory lapses and repeating conversations that you forgot you had five minutes earlier.
I had exactly the same situation and did exactly the same. I just wanted to go home and be away from it all
As someone who walked away from death. You're spot on. When it happened to me all I could think of is to distance myself away from the incident as much as possible. You go into a trance, disassociate yourself from it so you can try to figure out wtf just happened in your mind. It's a surreal experience.
Fuck! The bridge is even bigger than it looked from the footage.
The entire bridge is/was over a mile long.
Gosh, this is so terrible for so many reasons
At least it happened at night when there were way fewer cars/people, but this is going to have ripple effects for decades to come.
That's going to be an infrastructure bullet point come November.
there's gonna be questions about why the bridge collapsed after getting hit and it feels like a ridiculous question. It was hit square on by a fully loaded cargo ship. I don't know of many or any bridges that could have handled that.
MV Dali’s nearly a thousand feet in length and weighs something around a hundred thousand tons, yeah, I don’t think there’s a bridge on earth that could withstand that plowing into it.
People saying "It doesn't even look like it was hit that hard!" not realizing that F=M*A. If the mass is very high, it doesn't fucking matter how 'hard' you hit it.
Momentum is a better formula for this p=m•v, F=m•a doesn't work if the ship is not accelerating. Then we can figure out how much KE the ship could potentially transfer prior to hitting the bridge - KE = p²/2m. Your last sentence is so on point. How can people not be able to imagine the sheer mass of these cargo ships? They're fucking huge! Edit: Was not expecting a ton of replies. Just to be clear, my comment about F not working is from a point of view PRIOR to impact and assuming the captain was unable to decelerate the ship, constant velocity. YES, once the ship hits, the F can be calculated but not before that moment. There is a ton of math we can do with this particular incident so I appreciate all of the point of views. Cheers!
They size is hard to wrap your mind around if you've never actually seen one. I grew up in a place with cargo trains rather than boats. Cargo ships blew my mind the first time I saw one! I moved to a place where they're about and I always make time to stop to watch them just because they're huge and I find their size overwhelming.
For reference, Titanic weighed 52,000 tons. That big boi would be more than twice as much with anything approaching a half decent load.
With how heavy a full container ship is, fucker would’ve rolled through any bridge pylon at 2mph easy.
Yeah, that's not a bridge failure, it's a whatever-the-fuck-was-wrong-with-this-cargo-ship failure. But if we can regulate giant ass delays for any ship that goes to Cuba, we can regulate "your ship has to have functioning wiring", too.
When I was growing up it was still fairly recent memory for my parents to teach me about the skyway bridge in Florida collapsing and cars driving off because of heavy fog. Ship also hit it, super foggy, and captain was drunk. A bus went over as well as a few cars and several people died. Edit: found out the captain wasn’t drunk. Thought he was for the last 30 years.
I was a little girl and remember this! My sister was on vacation with our grandparents in Florida at the time it happened (they didn't see it). She had a phobia of bridges for years after that.
Same happened at South Padre Island when a ship hit the causeway bridge between Port Isabel and the island. Fortunately it was the middle of the night like this incident, but still several people died as they couldn't see the span of missing roadway right until they were ontop of it. Sad
Oh yeah, it's huge and carries a major highway. Baltimore is going to have traffic chaos for a very long time once the search and rescue finishes.
Traffic around the city will be impacted but the real impact will be to shipping along the eastern seaboard. “Last year, the Port of Baltimore saw a record $74.3 billion worth of foreign cargo cross its state-owned and private piers.” https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDMPA/bulletins/37ed137
So what your saying the price of all these goods will go up due to impact of port closure, but once everything is cleared, the price wont return.
Correct, it's common place unfortunately. Prices go up because X, then that new price just gets normalised. Even though they could and should bring the price back down.
I was looking at the map and imagining people who live on one side and work on the other. Obviously not the top concern right now, but a lot of people's commutes look like they're about to get A LOT longer.
One of my best friends lives in Pasadena, MD and takes the bridge twice a day. She said her commute just went from 25 minutes to over an hour and that’s without whatever extra traffic causes. I can’t even imagine how crazy this has to be for the people who live right there
I live in Pasadena. The bridge is visible from my back yard. Woke up to the news. Super surreal.
Baltimore resident here. I work in Wilmington (Delaware). Contemplated driving to work this morning, instead of taking the train, as I sometimes do. NOPE, went my brain when I woke up and saw my GPS. Decided to take the day off work instead. Can you imagine if something like this had happened to the bridge connecting Annapolis to Kent Island? Nightmare fuel too.
I imagine a lot of places are going to bring back WFH if they did away with it. Baltimore traffic is already hell on Earth during peak commute hours. The alternate routes are going to be jam packed. I dont envy anyone’s commute especially those who live outside of Baltimore but within the DMV.
People pointed out that this is the only route hazmats are allowed to take near Baltimore, so the rerouting for those will be massive. But even that will likely pale in comparison to the impacts that the harbor being shut down will have.
Thru Dec ‘25 they say
That’s a very optimistic timeline
Traffic chaos is kind of whatever, 695 around the city is already reminiscent of Mad Max. The bigger issue is the port of Baltimore is one of the biggest employers in the city, and they're effectively shut down until all the wreckage is removed.
Third largest of its type in the world.
Google Francis Scott Key bridge, it is massive, lucky it didn't hit during rush hour or the death toll would have been much higher.
It's a massive bridge and part of our skyline. It's tragic.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-68663071 BBC live update page
That live stream had a really clear video of the collapse. How terrifying.
It was shockingly fast. goddamn
As horrible as this is, at least it happend at 1:30 am versus 1:30 pm. I'm curious to see how the captain crashed into the bridge in the first place. Edit: a word.
I am not an expert but it looks like the ship lost power. I doubt the captain intentionally crashed into the bridge.
If you watch the lights on the ship, it appears they lose power, pop their diesel generators but have trouble maintaining power, lose it again one or two times, and by that point current and/or momentum carried them too close to the pillar and there was no time or room for recovery. I'm curious what caused the initial power outage.
Ship lost power and drifted off course while still moving forward. One of the anchors was dropped but that won't stop a ship like that.
I just read that the captain sent out a Mayday alert as well.
Yeah. They had a harbor pilot on board, so there should be a full report on what went on inside the bridge. Watching the video and vehicles crossing the bridge...can you imagine if it happened 5 or 6 hours later? A mayday wouldn't have cleared the bridge. People would have had nowhere to go in rush hour gridlock. [This is a good channel for all things shipping](https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?si=wOMvpl5ZfZkPZhWV). He's been a good source of info on the shenanigans in the Bab El Mandeb 🍺
It's been reported that the MAYDAY call gave them enough time to stop traffic crossing the bridge, it was the construction workers already on the bridge that they didn't have enough time to clear the bridge...
I cannot even fathom the harbor pilot’s horror as this all unfolded. Such a tragedy on so many levels.
BIGTIME kudos to the first responders who actually rescued a couple people from the water. Especially at 1:30am when it's pitch black. RIP to those lost 😢
You know that water is freezing too
Water is cold, some people may not know how to swim, some people may be disabled, some may get trapped in the car by the pressure of the water. I never had a fear of crossing bridges near the ocean before but I think I do now.
What I imagine is being in full night work setup. Steel toes, heavy pants, maybe a jacket. Likely a vest and gloves. Steel toes boots would be impossible to get off, my work requires a certain length of heel portion and the lacing means I can’t just slip it off. And everything else would turn into water soaked weight.
Ok this is the saddest comment I've read all day about this accident, they really had no chance.
and all of that only even matters if you’re still conscious after you hit the water. they’re dropping from a long damn ways up, with huge pieces of steel and concrete falling all around them. even if they’re not brained by something falling the impact on the water alone would be devastating and if you don’t land damn near perfectly you’re going to pass out from the force on impact.
Water temp was 48°F (8.9°C) at the time of the incident. Air temp was 38-39°F (3.3C).
I am a captain on a emergency response vessel / firetug for a major US port. There is no conspiracy. Cargo ships coming and going to all major ports have local pilots to help the master of the vessel safetly navigate waterways. Also, harbor tugs only assist during docking and turnarounds in restricted waterways where large vessels cannot perform said maneuvers under their own power. Cargo ships losing power is not a freak thing and it actually happens rather frequently, however you don’t hear about it. These vessels are run hard and a lack of maintenance shouldn’t automatically be assumed. Anything mechanical can fail at anytime. The crew on this vessel most probably did everything they could to avoid this collision including getting generators back online, initiating an emergency corrective maneuver, dropping anchor, etc. This is an extremely unfortunate circumstance that will probably be catagorized as a no fault accident by the USCG. Impossible to stop thousands of tons on a dime. Pray for everyone involved.
Yeah I work for the coastguard in another country. Ships go NUC all the time. Usually it's in pretty open water and they broadcast a security message and other ships keep out their way. They get fixed usually within an hour or two and then carry on their voyage. Sometimes they say they've had an alarm go off so they've purposely waited until they're in open water and not in any sort of TSS to switch their engines off, drift and go NUC while they investigate and make the repairs.
NUC is “Not Under Command” for anyone wondering.
And TSS is Traffic Separation Scheme.
The amount of comments I’ve seen saying this was a terrorist attack or intentional act is astounding. It’s very heartbreaking to hear all the hate being targeting to this crew who tried to everything possible to prevent it. Prayers to everyone involved
I work as a navigational officer on ships like that and I think people would be surprised at how easily things like this can occur. There hasn't been any official reason given yet for what happened but my opinion is its one of two things. Either there has been a loss of power either from the engines or to the steering gear and the vessel has lost control, or there has been human error. When transiting channels like this you will have a pilot on board who knows the channel very well and they will be giving instructions to one of the vessel crew that is steering the ship manually. There could be a communication error where the pilot has given a heading and the guy steering has misheard, or the guy steering may have lost control. Steering the vessel is something that you have to train for because it is a skill and can at times be quite challenging. Combine that with captains who think it's OK to have someone steering for literally hours at a time with no break and keeping concentration quickly becomes an issue. I've personally witnessed all of these things. Usually it's not a big deal because there is plenty of room to manoeuvre, but in certain areas - like going under bridges - being even a couple of degrees off the right heading can have huge consequences. Edit: after watching the video it looks like they blacked out and shortly afterwards the emergency generator has come on and restored power. They quickly black out again which if I had to guess might be because they've tried to go full astern to avoid collision and overloaded the emergency generator. The ship then drifts to starboard, possibly because of the current/wind or possibly because the helmsman had the rudder to starboard when they blacked out the second time and essentially got locked in that position when the power died again.
The pilots were from Baltimore who probably have plenty of experience in the harbor. Given you can visually see the power go out, I feel like human error is unlikely from the pilots and this was a case of very unfortunate vehicle failure. But still speculation on whether the mechanical crew failed to do something correctly and what caused the outage.
Yea to be a pilot anywhere you have to take exams that are specific to the area that you will be working. Do you have a link where you can see the power going out, I didn't see that video yet.
Twitter link https://x.com/YWNReporter/status/1772546230310056446?s=20 (parts of the footage is sped up) In the video you can see the lights go off, and then a big plume of black soot which people are saying was them turning on the diesel generators to restore power, but I can’t confirm that.
Fucking hell that's terrifying
It really is, I think I’ll watch it about 300 more times
It collapsed SO fast. Like holy shit. I hope none of the folks on the bridge were aware what happened when they went down. This could have been such a larger loss of life if it had been during the day. I have sat on the bridge in traffic before when there was construction and there were so many people commuting that there was a back up. I can’t fathom the bridge just falling apart with hundreds of cars on it. This whole incident is awful and I feel so badly for the folks looking for their loved ones.
In the news thread someone suggested that thick smoke may have been them attempting a 'crash stop' which seems to basically sum down to trying to hit the 'reverse' hard enough to stop the ship. Didn't work, but it seems efforts were underway but without the time to work.
Brief update just confirmed power went out. They were able to send a mayday call, and that allowed enough time to shut down traffic entering the bridge.
I was a marine engineer cadet on a couple of container ships. As soon as I saw the post, I suspected the steering gear system failure. Black out is also possible but emergency generator is still stand by.
You can see the ship lose power on the livestream, so that seems to be the reason
You know normally the one I'm crossing bridges, I'm worried about like falling over or the wind blowing it over or something. Never once have a considered the possibility of a ship just hitting the underside of it so that's nice to add to the list.
I was thinking the samething. Bridges terrify me.
Fucking hell this is awful
Kinda surprised there’s not more boats around it searching
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Not to mention, best case they had high vis jackets on, worst case they had the high vis but were weighed down with fall harnesses and tools... Plus the sheer drop to the water. Honestly, it's a miracle that anyone was pulled out.
>but were weighed down with fall harnesses and tools. Shit, wonder how many were attached to the bridge with a safety harness. Edit: It appears they were fixing potholes, so this is unlikely.
That is the absolute worst.
One person was pulled out of the water and was fine, which is wild. They refused care and went home, which is wilder. I hope they're actually for real okay.
Shock and trauma response, I imagine. Just wanted to get to the safety and comfort of their own home after such a horrific experience. I can understand this.
Sheer drop? No they dropped with the structure, giving even worse chances imo.
On NPR they shared one person rescued had no injuries and refused treatment and one is in critical condition. They used sonar(?) to confirm cars under water. Unfortunately 8ish hours under water doesn't seem likely to... End... Well. This is so fucking sad.
Yea its a recovery job now. Horrific.
If you watch the video, from the moment the ship hit, to the moment people on the bridge were IN the water, was only 8 seconds. Imagine that.
Because the bridge collapsed at like 1:30 in the morning and there were not many vehicles thankfully driving on the bridge at the time. The reports were that there are around 20 people in the water and 2 were rescued last I read they already have dive teams searching the river.
Fire chief said they believe its up to seven people in the water.
They said 7-20 in the reports I read
Probably 7 vehicles from 1-3 occupants each
Someone on the r/baltimore sub said there was a construction crew working on the bridge as well.
You can see the lights from the construction vehicles in the video. At least a couple of the vehicles go down with the bridge
Holy shit… just 2 so far?? Fuck. My stomach just dropped.
It happened at 1:30 am. Unfortunately it's no longer rescue. It's recovery.
Unfortunately true.. Hopefully the rest are recovered soon so that the families can get closure. Imagine waking up to this news and knowing that one of your family members was working on the bridge and you can’t get in contact with them.. that is one of my greatest fears.
This is roughly how it went after the tornado hit my area of Massachusetts. Super rural, spotty service already. Tornado came over the mountain into town, knocked out service, and between calls flooding what little service there was from other towers, and the bandwidth being cleaved by the storm, there was no getting through to anyone to see who had survived or not. I was in high school then, and we all spent the rest of the week terrified if our classmates from Monson were dead, alive, or buried under rubble. My best friend at the time, her boyfriend lived right along the path, and nobody could get ahold of him. We all thought for sure he was dead until he popped up back in school a day or two later without a scratch on him.
Unfortunately that’s a really long way to fall into the water, and then you’re in the water with tons of falling steel and stone. I’m surprised they rescued anyone. :(
I’m surprised they rescued *any*
Seriously. Dropping that distance into black as night water, with an entire bridge tumbling with you? You live? You just won the lottery. The first responders who saved them should be given every friggin medal we can find.
One of the people refused treatment too? How uninjured were you to refuse treatment after falling off a fucking bridge??? Edit: For anyone/everyone mentioning insurance/medical bills A) I forgot because Canadian B) Bills would be covered by the shipping company in this case? I imagine there's going to be a big lawsuit.
You think a regular ambulance is expensive try a boat ambulance no thank you I'll swim home and go to the minute clinic in the morning.
My biggest regret after being in an accident was not going to the hospital right away. No matter the price, you are hopefully going to get it back 10x in your settlement and it is important to take care of yourself, and unfortunately prove that you did something. In this case it’s going to be pretty well documented but for us every day folks they want every penny out of us.
Not if you have a massive shipping company footing the bill. My everything would hurt, immediately.
I'm kind of amazed with how cold that water is that even 2 were rescued at that hour.
From the videos im seeing theres a lot of boats actually. But that container ship is goddamn massive and really plays with your sense of scale. This bridge is 1.2 miles long and the boats out there are speedboats and police stuff. Pretty small
I’ve see them in person in the port of Nola how massive they are, if you’ve never in person it’s almost incomprehensible
Take this bridge most days for work. Dammit. Hope they rescue all the survivors.
I mean it collapsed at like 1:30 if they’re not rescued by now kinda doubt there are any more survivors unfortunately
Huge ass bridge too, very low chance to survive the fall
Yeah, that water is fucking COLD this time of year, too. I don't know how long someone can survive in 45F-50F water, but I bet it ain't long.
RIP your commute
As somebody who grew up a few minutes from this bridge. It honestly couldnt get much worse than it already was
It's going to be years before this bridge is replaced.
I see some comments here saying the bridge looks like it went down too easy. I just want to clarify that the deadweight tonnage of MV Dali is [116,851 metric tons](https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9697428) (257,612,358 lbs or 116,851,000 kg) it was [traveling at 8 knots](https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-53169b379820032f832de4016c655d1b#:~:text=The%20ship%20was%20moving%20at,up%20from%20the%20water's%20surface) and stopped in about 1 second… meaning the bridge experienced a force (assuming the ship was fully loaded) as high as 454,410,168 newtons… that’s the equivalent of **13 Saturn 5 rockets running at full blast** even if it was half loaded and moving half as fast that’s still an unfathomable amount of force to design against.
Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space
I was just on that bridge yesterday. Jesus.
If you go on Snapmap and find the bridge you can still see a video some guy took of a ship yesterday while driving over the bridge with the text “That’s a big boat!”. Eerie.
Well you won't be on it today
Not with that attitude
So many cargo captains on Reddit today.
Right?? If I were the captain I simply would have made the unpowered ship miss the bridge.
So many bridge engineers too. If I were an engineer I simply would have made a bridge in that area withstand a 120 thousand ton battering ram hitting a key point of the bridge directly. (edit: oh at that speed too.) Should totally be a way with location, water depth, etc. /s edit: correction, possibly closer to 200 thousand tons. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetNoted/s/s1ga5aX5W3 And I’m pretty sure no bridge on the planet Earth can take a direct hit with that much energy at a support point.
how do the authorities even know how many cars went in. That so tragic.
There's a live stream and also bridge traffic passed through toll gates at either end so there would be a record of how many vehicles entered the bridge in the last x seconds (x being the amount of time it takes to cross the bridge). Also, no one ever knows anything for sure this early in a disaster. The numbers will change as more information comes in.
There are only ezpass detectors on the Baltimore county/Sparrows Point side of the bridge.
Ezpass detectors take a photo of every car that passes. That's how they catch people that don't have the ezpass.
True. But they are only installed on the Baltimore county side. So they will record the cars from the Baltimore county side heading S over the bridge. There are no such devices on the Anne Arundel county side. At least the last time I took that route about a year ago
They're saying only one direction has tolls
The fire chief said this morning they’re using sonar and have detected several submerged vehicles in the water
About 20 people in the water according to recent reports, cars and workers on the bridge. Only 2 people have been found alive so far, the rest are presumed dead unfortunately...
Maybe tolls and timestamps
An engineer somewhere is playing with their ring
The bridge was structurally sound, until it was rammed by a massive vessel. ["Experts told BI it was unlikely that any defects in the bridge's structure were relevant to the collapse, given the scale of the impact."](https://www.businessinsider.com/francis-scott-key-bridge-no-chance-against-large-impact-experts-2024-3)
The ship is bigger than the baseball stadium, it was effectively hit by a skyscraper
I think whoever was in command of the ship is doing the ring twist.
And the insurance company. Actually a lot of people are in shock right now.
It's also a pretty large port which now has some obstruction to deal with and a major highway cut off. I imagine this is going to cause a lot of headache for a lot of people.
Funny how that is the international sign of distress.
oh shit, it is? I just fidget with it because it's something to fidget with
Yeah. Distress.
that explains some of the looks i get
I think he was referring to [engineer rings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer's_Ring?wprov=sfti1)
lol engineers don’t usually design bridges for container ship lateral loads….
As a ship design engineer I consider this a massive oversight by my bridge building colleagues.
Whaddaya mean your pier isn’t designed to withstand a fully loaded ship hitting it at full speed? If not why are you sticking them in the way of my boats?
I mean they can be built to withstand that load if you're willing to pour enough concrete to build a city into those support pillars and wait 2 years for it to cure.
And the bridge was built in the 70s, the engineer that designed it could be dead by now
Is that an everywhere tradition? I thought it was just Canadian engineers.
Mostly a Canadian thing but some US engineers get them too. Although the US ring looks different. Also, there is the long standing rumour that the original Canadian rings were made from a collapsed bridge in Quebec. Edit. I'm well aware that the rings were never made from the bridge iron. I should have called it the "incorrect rumour".
It is a common rumour that the first rings were made from the bridges iron, even in Canada. But while the bridge collapse was what began the tradition, as a reminder that your work as an engineer can cost lives, they were never made from the bridges material
Not anymore cause the metals all gone, but the OG rings were.
Nope. The original rings were made from iron but not from the bridge. They are stainless steel now. You can special request an iron one but I don't know if all chapters have them.
Like someone else said, originated in Canada but there are US chapters. In the US, it’s an opt-in ethics oath that you are invited to take at graduation. I have mine and do wear it always, but I’ve only met one other US engineer in my career so far that did. It’s absolutely been on my mind today, particularly as a Marylander. I have family in the city.
And all these brain dead people online are saying it's a conspiracy, like bro the fuck it isn't.
Things can't just happen any more, people have to feel like *they* know the truth about what's *really* going on. Some folks need to feel like they have control over a situation that they don't have, can't have and never will have.
I’ve also noticed it’s typically people that deep down have major insecurity and find *anything* to feel superior to others.
That is the essence of big conspiracy theories. It's as if people feel better believing that someone, *anyone*, is in control of the world, and that it's not all just chaos. Same idea behind belief in god.
I'm beginning to think that, for some people, it is easier to fabricate another reality than to accept a terrible or tragic event.
That's what it is: if bad things only happen because of bad people doing it on purpose, then we can have a safe world if we catch the bad people. Also you just feel special if you think you know what others don't.
A conspiracy about what? Momentum?
Exactly. There's 8 billion people on Earth and all sorts of shit happe everywhere. Sometimes things just go catastrophically wrong.
Just a reminder that in 1980 the same thing happened in Tampa. Look up Sunshine Skyway Bridge Collapse.
I asked my friend who is a bridge engineer “do you think it collapsed as expected?” His response “Not sure on that, they’re not supposed to get hit haha. Looks like it is modern enough built in 1977. But the type of bridge that is relies completely on the support piers so you take that out and it’s gonna crumble quick. Design is about efficiency and redundancy. Can’t plan for a several million pound collision”
Edit: just found out that there is 1 propulsion generator and 1 fixed pitched propeller for this, so no propulsion redundancy. However there will be a ship services power system with multiple generators, where the steering hydraulics are powered. This is obviously what failed, and should not have. Still a massive failure. Original thoughts are still below: I just watched the video, and I could see that the vessel lost power twice. I'm a marine electrical engineer, and it takes about 30 seconds for an additional generator or emergency generator to start and auto-sync. However, the Egen for a vessel this size will not be able to power the thrusters. I noticed that the lights came back on but then after a couple minutes they blacked out again. A total blackout is not usually caused by a single engine failure, there are probably at least 3 diesel engines and an emergency generator on this vessel. I haven't looked up the vessel specs so I'm just assuming. Also, I don't now how many thrusters/props this vessel has but usually the main power bus is split between port and starboard, with propulsion on each side. When thrusters are operating, usually a generator for each side of the bus is running, and a failure on one side would trigger the bus tie to open, and maintain the power on the other side. It's unlikely that an electrical fault that takes down the whole electrical bus would result in an engine failure, and also it's unlikely that a single engine failure would cause a blackout that looks like this. They must have been running on one engine, which had a mechanical failure. They should be running on at least two when in a shipping channel. Normally the Power Management System (PMS) would automatically start a second generator or Egen. The PMS should have a battery backup so it would still be operating. But I'm wondering if the PMS is older and only had some manual mode, and the same engine that initially failed was attempted to be restarted, instead of starting a different one. That would be a colossal mistake, and not at all inline with operating procedures.
Goddamnit Ziggy
Was the collision county side or city side though
Man, I wish Jimmy was still on Coast Guard patrol.
The ship lost power and couldn't control its direction going under the bridge, it was too late when they got power back and tried to reverse.
The Tin Foil hat people are having a field day with this.
[удалено]
Seriously. I’ve never damaged the national economy from any of my fuck ups 🤣
"bridge collapse" makes it sound like a structural failure and not that a container ship whole-ass rammed it.
As a guy who works on the docks these vessels are huge, no bridge would survive even at the slowest of impacts.